Page:Swedenborgs Maximus Homo.pdf/78

 truths, the new liberty, new light, and new life which flowed into the minds of all, of whatever name or creed, "who were in the spiritual affection of truth." For we are told that, in consequence of his release from spiritual bondage and his restoration to greater liberty by the Last Judgment, "the man of the Church could more easily perceive interior truths if he desired'" (L. J. 74), and that after that event "the state of the Lord's Kingdom became different from what it was before, as the reception of divine truth and good became thereby more universal more interior, more easy, and more distinct." (A. E. 1217.)

Then, the First Christian Church, we are told was consummated at the time of the Last Judgment (1757), and the New Christian Church then commenced. And we are repeatedly taught in the divinely authorized Writings, that there always is and always must be a church on earth; that the church is the very heart and lungs of humanity, without which the human race could not exist. But not until thirty years (1787) after the consummation or end of the former Church was there an organized or visible body of New-churchmen. And if any such visible body is the Lord's New Church, to the exclusion of all others—an opinion held by many persons—then there was no church on earth for thirty years