Page:Swedenborgs Maximus Homo.pdf/107

 be useful to add something more from the Writings bearing directly on this point. Assuming this idea to be correct, it would place Swedenborg in palpable conflict with himself; for it would make the New Church a church of one degree only, which is contrary to the plain teaching of passages already quoted. (A. E. 744, 876.) In one of these passages it is said that the New Heaven from which the New Church on earth descends and with which it forms one, consists of three degrees; and in the other that "the Lord's Church is, like heaven, distinguished into three degrees." And we are told what class of persons those of the middle and lowest degrees consist of—certainly not of such as have their minds opened to the third or celestial degree. They are persons in quite an external state.

And as there are three discrete degrees in heaven and in the Church, so in the mind of every man there are three similar degrees "existing from his birth potentially, and actually when opened." And we are told how these degrees are opened:—

"The inmost degree of man's life is for the inmost heaven; the middle degree for the middle heaven; and the ultimate [or lowest] for the lowest heaven. . . . These degrees of life appertaining to man are opened successively. The