Page:Swedenborgs Maximus Homo.pdf/49

 "The Lord provides that in every religion there may be precepts, such as are in the decalogue: as that God is to be worshiped; His name is not to be profaned; sacred days are to be kept; parents are to be honored; murder, adultery, and theft are not to be committed, nor false witness borne. The nation which regards these precepts as divine, and lives according to them from religion, is saved. Moreover, the majority of the nations remote from Christendom do regard them not as civil but as divine laws, and hold them sacred.

"Among the arcana of heaven is also this: that the angelic heaven is in the sight of the Lord like one man, whose soul and life is the Lord; and that this heavenly man is in every particular a man, not only as to its external members and organs, but also as to its internal members and organs (which are more numerous), and even as to its skin, membranes, cartilages, and bones; while both the latter and the former are not material but spiritual in that Man.

"And it is provided by the Lord that those also whom the Gospel could not reach, but a religion only, may also have a place in that heavenly Man, that is, in heaven, by constituting the parts that are called the skin, membranes, cartilages, and bones; and that they, like the others, should partake of heavenly joy. For it matters not whether their joy is such as belongs to the angels of the highest heaven, or such as belongs to those of the lowest; since every one who enters heaven, enters into the greatest joy of his heart. He cannot bear a greater, for he would thereby be suffocated. . ..