Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/57

Rh of all their craft and subtlety and dire malignity; and through his own consummate wisdom and power He subdued them all, and reduced the hells to a state of order unknown before in that dark realm. As the prophet Isaiah again says: "Therefore his own arm brought salvation unto Him; and his righteousness, it sustained Him."

And while He was reducing the hells to order, and purging his assumed humanity of its evil hereditary taints, He was at the same time filling that humanity with his own absolute Divinity. In this way He successively put off all that was imperfect and finite pertaining to his assumed humanity, and put on that which was infinite and perfect. He thus glorified that humanity by imbuing it with his own Divine life. He exalted it to a perfect union with the Divinity that was in Him from conception. He made it a Divine Humanity; that is, a humanity endued with all Divine powers, gifts and graces. Therefore He says: "As the Father [the essential Divinity] hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son [the humanity] to have life in Himself." "I and the Father are one."

The process whereby this oneness of Divinity with humanity was effected, was a purely Divine process; and can be comprehended only in the degree that one experiences the likeness of it in himself; that is, in the degree that he "puts off the