Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 2.djvu/70

 bles a man from the Divine Human of the Lord, therefore the angels say that they are in the Lord, and some that they are in his body; by which they mean that they are in the good of his love. As the Lord Himself also teaches, where he says: "Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in Me;—for without Me ye can do nothing.—Continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love." John xv. 4-10.

Such being the conception of the Divine in the heavens, it is therefore implanted in every man who receives any influx from heaven, to think of God under a human shape. So thought the ancients, and so the moderns likewise think, both those without and those within the church. The simple see Him in thought as an old man encompassed with brightness.

But all those have extinguished this implanted perception, who have removed the heavenly influx by their self-derived intelligence or by a life of evil. They who have extinguished it by self-derived intelligence, are not willing to acknowledge any but an invisible God; but they who have extinguished it by a life of evil, are not willing to acknowledge any God. Nor is either class aware that any such implanted perception exists, because it no longer exists with them; when yet this is the Divine celestial itself, which primarily flows from heaven into man, because man was born for heaven; and no one enters heaven without an idea of the Divine.