Page:Arcana Coelestia (Potts) vol 1.djvu/49

 yet without their being able to hurt a single hair of my head, so secure was I under the Lord's protection. From so many years' experience I have been thoroughly instructed concerning the world of spirits and its nature, as well as concerning the combat which those being regenerated must needs endure, in order to attain the happiness of eternal life. But as no one can be so well instructed in such subjects by a general description as to believe them with an undoubting faith, the particulars will of the Lord's Divine mercy be related in the following pages.

. Verse 31. ''And God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.'' This state is called "very good," the former ones being merely called "good;" because now the things which are of faith make a one with those which are of love, and thus a marriage is effected between spiritual things and celestial things.

. All things relating to the knowledges of faith are called spiritual, and all that are of love to the Lord and our neighbor are called celestial; the former belong to man's understanding, and the latter to his will.

. The times and states of man's regeneration in general and in particular are divided into six, and are called the days of his creation; for, by degrees, from being not a man at all, he becomes at first something of one, and so by little and little attains to the sixth day, in which he becomes an image of God.

.Meanwhile the Lord continually fights for him against evils and falsities, and by combats confirms him in truth and good. The time of combat is the time of the Lord's working; and therefore in the Prophets the regenerate man is called the work of the fingers of God. Nor does He rest until love acts as principal; then the combat ceases. When the work has so far advanced that faith is conjoined with love, it is called "very good;" because the Lord then actuates him, as His likeness. At the end of the sixth day the evil spirits depart, and good spirits take their place, and the man is introduced into heaven, or into the celestial paradise; concerning which in the following chapter.

. This then is the internal sense of the Word, its veriest life, which does not at all appear from the sense of the letter.