Page:Arcana Coelestia (Potts) vol 1.djvu/74

 and with angels, and were also instructed by visions and dreams, which were most delightful and paradisal to them. They had from the Lord continual perception, so that when they reflected on what was treasured up in the memory they instantly perceived whether it was true and good, insomuch that when anything false presented itself, they not only avoided it but even regarded it with horror: such also is the state of the angels. In place of this perception of the Most Ancient Church, however, there afterwards succeeded the knowledge (cognitio) of what is true and good from what had been previously revealed, and afterwards from what was revealed in the Word.

. Verse 17. But of the tree of the knowledge (scientia) of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die. These words, taken together with those just explained, signify that it is allowable to become acquainted with what is true and good by means of every perception derived from the Lord, but not from self and the world; that is, we are not to inquire into the mysteries of faith by means of the things of sense and of the memory (per sensualia et scientifica), for in this case the celestial of faith is destroyed.

. A desire to investigate the mysteries of faith by means of the things of sense and of the memory, was not only the cause of the fall of the posterity of the Most Ancient Church, as treated of in the following chapter, but it is also the cause of the fall of every church; for hence come not only falsities, but also evils of life.

. The worldly and corporeal man says in his heart, If I am not instructed concerning the faith, and everything relating to it, by means of the things of sense, so that I may see, or by means of those of the memory (scientifica), so that I may understand, I will not believe; and he confirms himself in this by the consideration that natural things cannot be contrary to spiritual. Thus he is desirous of being instructed from things of sense in what is celestial and Divine, which is as impossible as it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle; for the more he desires to grow wise by such means, the more he blinds himself, till at length he believes nothing, not even that there