Spiritual Life and the Word of God

cording to the truths and goods of the Word, of the church, and of worship, and afterward de

heaven wills to have its own, and hell wills to have its own, and yet they cohere, they are both swept away, and thus the proper human life perishes, and the man becomes like a brute animal, continua

y are seen in the light of heaven they appear like dried skeletons. But this kind of profanation is rare, since the Lord provides against a m

recedes from faith and from a life of faith, does not profane, for the reason that the faith of childhood is a faith of the memory, and is the master's faith in the child; while the faith of adult age is a faith of the understanding, and thus a man's own faith. This faith a man can profane if he recedes from it and lives contrary to it, but not the former. For nothing en

profaned by his receding. But the profanations of this kind are more or less grievous according to the quality of the truth and the consequent faith, and according to the quality of

hs in a corresponding order. Therefore when a man passes over into a contrary state, and either in faith or life denies the truths of the Word that he has previously acknowledged, the things that are in the natural mind no longer correspond with those that are in the spiritual mind; consequently heaven with its light flows in through the spiritual mind into non-corresponding things, or into things opposite to those that correspond in the natural man; and from this a fantasy arises that is so direful that they seem to themselves to fly in the air like dragons, while shre

h profanation is not possible. And this shows why the Gentiles, who are ignorant of the Lord and know nothing about the Word, cannot bring upon themselves such profanation; neither can the Jews, for they deny the Lord from their infancy, and heaven is not opened to them by means of the W