Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/362

 more remote from the Lord, thus in a lower degree of good and truth, and less perfect. All of which agrees with the universal law announced in these words, and often repeated by Swedenborg:

"All perfection increases toward the interiors, because interior beings are nearer the Divine and in themselves purer; but exterior things are more remote from the Divine, and in themselves grosser."'—H. H. 34. See also A. C. 1799, 3405, 5146, '7.

It will be noticed, too, that Swedenborg's disclosures on this subject are in perfect agreement with the apostle Paul's testimony. For in one of his letters to the Corinthian church he says: "I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ about fourteen years ago (whether in the body I cannot tell, or whether out of the body I cannot tell: God knoweth): such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man . . how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words which it is not possible (—see Schleusner's Greek and Latin Lexicon) for a man to utter" (2 Cor. xii. 1-4).

All Christians, therefore, who regard the testimony of the great apostle as credible, must believe that there are at least three heavens. And we may remark in passing, that Swedenborg's pneumatology shows us how Paul was caught up to the third heaven. It was not by any elevation through natural space, for heaven is not to be approached in that way; but by the opening of the third or highest degree of his mind, together with the spiritual senses belonging to that degree. In this way he had a vision of things in the inmost or third