Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/208

 at the present day, but only natural good with some.

Moreover every church at the commencement is spiritual; for it begins from charity, but in the course of time turns aside from charity to faith; and then from being an internal church it becomes an external one; and its end is when it becomes external, since it then places every thing in knowledge, and little or nothing in life. ..

Since there is an internal or spiritual sense to every word in the Apocalypse, and since that sense contains the arcana of the state of the church in heaven and on earth; and since those arcana can be revealed to no one but to him who knows that sense, and to whom at the same time it has been granted to consort with the angels, and to speak spiritually with them; therefore, lest the things which are therein written should be hidden to men, and should hereafter be disregarded because not understood, its contents have been disclosed to me; but they are too numerous to be described here. ..

He who knows not the internal or spiritual sense, never can divine what is meant in the Apocalypse by the dragon, and by the battle of Michael and his angels with it; what by the tail with which the dragon drew down a third part of the stars from heaven;