Page:Arcana Coelestia (Potts) vol 1.djvu/87



meaning none wise and intelligent. Also in Jeremiah:—

"One who executes judgment" means a wise person; and "one who seeks the truth," an intelligent one.

. But it is not easy to perceive how the case is with these things unless the state of the celestial man is understood. In the celestial man the internal man is distinct from the external, indeed so distinct that the celestial man perceives what belongs to the internal man, and what to the external, and how the external man is governed through the internal by the Lord. But the state of the posterity of this celestial man, in consequence of desiring their Own, which belongs to the external man, was so changed that they no longer perceived the internal man to be distinct from the external, but imagined the internal to be one with the external, for such a perception takes place when man inclines to his Own.

. Verse 24. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. To "leave father and mother," is to recede from the internal man, for it is the internal which conceives and brings forth the external; to "cleave unto his wife," is that the internal may be in the external; to "be one flesh," that they are there together; and because before, the internal man, and the external from the internal, was spirit, but now they have become flesh. Thus was celestial and spiritual life adjoined to the Own, that they might be as one.

. This posterity of the Most Ancient Church was not evil, but was still good; and because they desired to live in the external man, or in their Own, this was permitted them by the Lord, what is spiritual celestial however being mercifully insinuated therein. How the internal and external act as a one, or how they appear as a one, cannot be known unless the influx of the one into the other is known. In order to conceive some idea of it, take for example an action. Unless in an action there is charity, that is, love and faith, and in these