Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence, Emanuel Swedenborg [best ereader for graphic novels .txt] 📗

below would immediately extinguish the spiritual light flowing in from above.

189.* The man who has become spiritual by acknowledgment of God, and wise by rejection of the proprium, sees divine providence in the world as a whole and in each and all things in it. Looking at natural things, he sees it; at civil things, he sees it; at spiritual things, he sees it; and in things simultaneous as well as successive. He sees it in ends, causes, effects, uses, forms, things great and small. Above all he sees it in the salvation of men, as that Jehovah gave the Word, taught men by it about God and about heaven and hell and eternal life, and Himself came into the world to redeem men and save them. Man sees these and many other things and divine providence in them from spiritual light in natural light.

* The Latin original has no number 188.

[2] The merely natural man, however, sees none of these things. He is like a man who sees a magnificent temple and hears a preacher enlightened in divine things, but once home asserts that he saw only a stone building and heard nothing but sounds made. Again, he is like a near-sighted man who steps into a garden remarkable for fruits of every sort and who reports on getting home that he saw only woods and trees. Moreover, when such persons, having become spirits after death, are taken up into the angelic heaven where all objects are in forms representative of love and wisdom, they see none of them, not even that they exist. I have seen this happen with a number who denied the Lord's divine providence.

190. Many constant things exist, created that inconstant things may exist. Such constants are the ordained changes in the rising and setting of sun, moon and stars; their obscurations by interpositions called eclipses; the heat and light from them; the seasons of the year, called spring, summer, autumn and winter; the times of the day, morning, noon, evening and night; also atmospheres, waters and lands, viewed in themselves; the vegetative force in the plant kingdom, that and the reproductive in the animal kingdom; likewise what is constantly produced when these forces are set in action in accord with the laws of order. These and many more things existing from the creation are provided so that infinitely varying things may exist, for what varies can exist only in what is constant, fixed and certain.

[2] Examples will illustrate this. The varieties of vegetation would not be possible unless sunrise and sunset and the resulting heat and light were constant. Harmonies are infinitely varied, and would not exist unless the atmospheres were constant in their laws and the ear in its form. Varieties of vision, which are also infinite, would not exist unless the ether in its laws and the eye in its organization were constant; equally so, colors, unless light was constant. The same is true of thoughts, words and actions, which are of infinite variety too; they could not exist, either, unless the organic forms of the body were constant. Must not a house be steady for a variety of things to be done in it by a person? So must a temple be for the various acts of worship, preaching, instruction and devout meditation to be possible in it. So in much else.

[3] As for the varieties found in the constant, fixed and certain, they go on to infinity and have no end; no one thing in the whole universe or in any part of it is ever precisely the same as another, nor can be in the progress of things to eternity. Who disposes these varieties which proceed to infinity and eternity so that they have order unless it is He who created what is constant to the end that they may exist in it? And who can dispose the infinite varieties of life among men but He who is life itself, that is, love itself and wisdom itself? Except by His divine providence, which is like a continual creation, can the infinite affections of men and their thoughts thence and thus the men themselves be disposed so as to make one? Evil affections and the thoughts from them to make one devil which is hell, and good affections and the thoughts from them one Lord in heaven? We have said and shown several times before that the whole angelic heaven is like one man in the Lord's sight, an image and likeness of Him, and all hell over against it like one monstrous man. This has been said because some natural men seize on arguments for their madness in favor of nature and of one's own prudence from even the constant and fixed which must exist for the variable to exist in it.

X. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ONE'S OWN PRUDENCE; THERE ONLY APPEARS TO BE AND IT SHOULD SO APPEAR; BUT DIVINE PROVIDENCE IS UNIVERSAL BY BEING IN THE LEAST THINGS

191. That there is no such thing as one's own prudence is contrary to appearances and therefore to the belief of many. Because it is, one who believes, on the strength of the appearance, that human prudence does all things, cannot be convinced except by reasons to be had from a more profound investigation and to be gathered from causes. The appearance is an effect, and causes disclose how it arises. By way of introduction something will be said about the common faith on the subject. Contrary to the appearance the church teaches that love and faith are not from man but from God, so also wisdom and intelligence, therefore prudence also, and in general all good and truth. When this teaching is accepted, one must also agree that there is no such thing as one's own prudence, but there only appears to be. Prudence comes only from intelligence and wisdom and both of these only from the understanding and its grasp of truth and good. All this is accepted and believed by those who acknowledge divine providence, but not by those who only acknowledge human prudence.

[2] Now, either what the church teaches is true, that all wisdom and prudence are from God, or what the world teaches, that they are from man. Can these views be reconciled in any other way than this, that what the church teaches is the truth, and what the world teaches is the appearance? For the church establishes its teaching from the Word, but the world its teaching from the proprium; and the Word is God's, and the proprium is man's. Because prudence is from God and not from man a Christian in his devotions, prays God to lead his thoughts, purposes and actions, and also adds that by himself he cannot. Again, seeing someone doing good, he says the person has been led to it by God; and so about much else. Can anyone speak so unless he inwardly believes it? To believe it inwardly comes from heaven. But when a man deliberates and gathers arguments in favor of human prudence he can believe the contrary, and this is from the world. The internal faith prevails with those who acknowledge God in their hearts; the external faith with those who do not acknowledge Him at heart, however much they may with the lips.

192. We said that a person who believes, on the strength of the appearance, that human prudence does all things, can be convinced only by reasons to be had from a more profound investigation and gathered from causes. In order, then, that the reasons gathered from causes may be plain to the understanding, let them be put forward in due order as follows:

i. All man's thoughts are from affections of his life's love; there are and can he no thoughts apart from them. ii. The affections of the life's love are known to the Lord alone. iii. Through His divine providence the Lord leads the affections of the life's love of man and at the same time the thoughts, too, from which human prudence comes. iv. By His divine providence the Lord assembles the affections of all mankind into one form—the human form. v. Heaven and hell, which are from mankind, are therefore in such a form. vi. Those who have acknowledged nature alone and human prudence alone make up hell, and those who have acknowledged God and His divine providence make up heaven. vii. All this can be effected only as it appears to man that he thinks from himself and disposes by himself.

193. ( i ) All man's thoughts are from affections of his life's love; there are and can be no thoughts apart from them. It has been shown above in this treatise and also in the one entitled Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love and Wisdom, Parts I and V particularly, what the life's love and the affections and the thoughts from them are essentially, and what the sensations and actions arising from them in the body are. Inasmuch as these are the causes from which human prudence issues as an effect, something needs to be said about them here also. For what has been written earlier elsewhere cannot be as closely connected with what is written later as it will be if the same things are recalled and placed with both in view.

[2] Earlier in this treatise, and in that just mentioned about Divine Love and Wisdom, it was shown that in the Lord are divine love and wisdom; that these two are life itself; that from the two man has will and understanding, will from the divine love and understanding from the divine wisdom; that heart and lungs in the body correspond to these two; that this may make plain that as the pulsation of the heart along with the respiration of the lungs rules the whole man as to the body, so the will together with the understanding rules him as to his mind; that thus there are two principles of life in everyone, one natural and the other spiritual, and that the natural principle of life is the heartbeat, and the spiritual is the will of the mind; that each adjoins a consort to itself with which it cohabits and performs the functions of life; and that the heart joins the lungs to itself, and the will the understanding to itself.

[3] Now, as the soul of the will is love, and the soul of the understanding is wisdom, both of them from the Lord, love is the life of everyone and is such life as it has in union with wisdom; or what is the same, the will is the life of everyone and is such life as it has in conjunction with the understanding. More on the subject may be seen above in this treatise and especially in Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love and Wisdom, Parts I and V.

194. It was also demonstrated in the treatises mentioned that the life's love produces subordinate loves from itself, called affections; that these are exterior and interior; and that taken together they make one dominion or kingdom as it were, in which the life's love is lord or king. It was also shown that these subordinate loves or affections adjoin consorts to themselves, each its own, the interior affections consorts called perceptions, and the exterior consorts called knowledges, and each cohabits with its consort and performs the functions of its life. In each instance, it was shown, the union is like that of life's very being with life's coming forth, which is such that the one is nothing without the other; for what is life's being unless it is active and what is life's activity if it is not from life's very being? The conjunction in life, it was likewise shown, is like that of sound and harmony, of sound and utterance, too, in general like that of the heart's pulsation and the respiration of the lungs, a union, again, such that one without the other is nothing and each becomes something in union with the other. Union must either be in them or come about by them.

[2] Consider, for example, sound. One who thinks that sound is something if there is nothing distinctive in it is much mistaken. It also corresponds to affection in man, and as something distinctive is always in it the affection of a person's love is known from the sound of his voice in speaking, and his thought is known from the varied sounds which speech is. Hence the wiser angels perceive just from the sound of his voice a man's life's love together with some of the affections which are its derivatives. This has been remarked that it may be known that no affection is possible without its thought, and no thought without its affection. More on the subject can be seen above in this treatise and