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

[3] I have often seen this evidenced. It was granted some spirits to perceive and sense that they were being led by others. Thereupon they were so enraged that they were reduced almost to mental impotence. They said that they would rather be kept bound in hell than not to be allowed to think as they willed and to will as they thought. This they called being bound in their very life, which was harder and more intolerable than to be bound bodily. Not being allowed to speak and act as they thought and willed, they did not call being bound. For the enjoyment of civil and moral life, which consists in speaking and acting, itself restrains and at the same time mitigates that.

[4] Inasmuch as man does not want to know that he is led to think by others, but wants to think from himself and believes that he does so, it follows that he himself is in fault, nor can he throw off the blame so long as he loves to think what he thinks. If he does not love it, he breaks his connection with those from whom his thought flows. This occurs when he knows the thought is evil, therefore determines to avoid it and desist from it. He is then also taken by the Lord from the society in that evil and transferred to a society free of it. If, however, he recognizes the evil and does not shun it, fault is imputed to him, and he is responsible for the evil. Therefore, whatever a man believes that he does from himself is said to be done from the man, and not from the Lord.

[5] Second: It then seems as if evil is from the Lord. This may be thought to be the conclusion from what was shown above (n. 288), namely, that good flowing in from the Lord is turned into evil and truth into falsity in hell. But who cannot see that evil and falsity do not come of good and truth, therefore not from the Lord, but from the recipient subject or object which is in evil and falsity and which perverts and inverts what flows into it, as was amply shown above (n. 292). The source of evil and falsity in man has been pointed out frequently in the preceding pages. Moreover, an experiment was made in the spiritual world with those who believed that the Lord could remove evils in the wicked and introduce good instead, thus move the whole of hell into heaven and save all. That this is impossible, however, will be seen towards the end of this treatise, where instantaneous salvation and unmediated mercy are to be treated of.

[6] Third: They do not comprehend how the one Lord can cause all to think so diversely. The Lord's divine love is infinite, likewise His divine wisdom. An infinity of love and wisdom proceeds from Him, flows in with all in heaven, thence with all in hell, and from heaven and hell with all in the world. Thinking and willing therefore cannot lack in anyone, for what is infinite is limitless. The infinite things that issue from the Lord flow in not only universally but also in least things. For the divine is universal by being in least things, and the divine in least things constitutes what is called universal, as was shown above, and the divine in something least is still infinite. Hence it may be evident that the one Lord causes each person to think and will according to the person's nature and does so in accordance with laws of His providence. It was shown above (nn. 46-69) and also in the treatise Divine Love and Wisdom (nn. 17-22), that everything in the Lord, or proceeding from Him, is infinite.

295. (ii) The evil are continually leading themselves into evils, but the Lord is continually leading them away from evils. The nature of divine providence with the good is more readily comprehended than its nature with the evil. As the latter is now under consideration, it will be set forth in this order:

1. In every evil there are innumerable things. 2. An evil man of himself continually leads himself more and more deeply into his evils. 3. Divine providence with the evil is a continual tolerance of evil, to the end that there may be a continual withdrawal from it. 4. Withdrawal from evil is effected by the Lord in a thousand most secret ways.

296. In order, then, that divine providence with the evil may be seen clearly and therefore understood, the propositions just stated are to be explained in the order in which they were presented.

First: In every evil there are innumerable things. To man's sight an evil appears to be a single thing. Hatred does, and revenge, theft and fraud, adultery and whoredom, pride and presumption, and the rest. It is unknown that in every evil there are innumerable things, exceeding in number the fibres and vessels in the human body. For an evil man is a hell in least form, and hell consists of myriads and myriads of spirits, each of whom is in form like a man, but a monstrous one, in whom all the fibres and vessels are inverted. A spirit himself is an evil which appears to him as one thing, but in it are innumerable things, as numerous as the lusts of that evil. For everyone, from head to foot, is his own evil or his own good. Since an evil man is such, plainly he is one evil composed of countless different evils, all severally evils, and called lusts of evil. It follows that all these, one after another, must be cured and changed by the Lord for man to be reformed, and that it can be done only by the Lord's divine providence, step by step from man's first years to his last.

[2] Every lust of evil, when it is visually presented, appears in hell like some noxious creature, a serpent, a cockatrice, a viper, a horned owl, a screech-owl, or some other; so do the lusts of evil in an evil man appear when he is viewed by angels. All these forms of lust must be changed one by one. The man himself, who appears as to his spirit like a monstrous man or devil, must be changed to appear like a comely angel, and each lust of evil changed to appear like a lamb or sheep or pigeon or turtle dove, as affections of good in angels appear in heaven when they are visually represented. Changing a serpent into a lamb, or a cockatrice into a sheep, or an owl into a dove, can be done only gradually, by uprooting evil together with its seed and implanting good seed in its place. This can only be done, however, comparatively as is done in the grafting of trees, of which the roots with some of the trunk remain, but the engrafted branch turns the sap drawn through the old root into sap that produces good fruit. The branch to be engrafted in this instance is to be had only from the Lord, who is the tree of life; this is also in keeping with the Lord's words in John 15:1-7.

[3] Second: An evil man from himself continually leads himself more deeply into his evils. He does so "from himself" because all evil is from man, for, as was said, he turns good, which is from the Lord, into evil. He leads himself more and more deeply into evil for the reason, essentially, that as he wills and commits evil, he enters more and more interiorly and also more and more deeply into infernal societies. Hence the enjoyment of evil increases, too, and occupies his thoughts until he feels nothing more agreeable. One who has entered more interiorly and deeply into infernal societies becomes like one bound by chains. So long as he lives in the world, however, he does not feel his chains; they seem to be made of soft wool or smooth silken threads. He loves them, for they titillate; but after death, from being soft, those chains become hard, and from being pleasant become galling.

[4] That the enjoyment of evil grows is known from thefts, robberies, plunderings, revenge, tyranny, lucre, and other evils. Who does not feel a heightening of enjoyment in them as he succeeds in them and practices them uninhibited? A thief, we know, feels such enjoyment in thefts that he cannot desist from them, and, a wonder, he loves one stolen coin more than ten that are given him. It would be similar with adultery, had it not been provided that the power to commit this evil decreases with the abuse, but with many there still remains the enjoyment of thinking and talking about it, and if nothing more, there is still the lust of touch.

[5] It is not known, however, that this heightening of enjoyment comes from a man's entering into infernal societies more and more interiorly and deeply as he perpetrates evils from the will as well as from thought. If the evils are only in the thoughts, and not in the will, he is not yet in an infernal society having that evil; he enters it when the evils are also in the will. Then, if he also thinks the evil is contrary to the precepts of the Decalog and regards these precepts as divine, he commits the evil of set purpose and by so doing plunges to a depth from which he can be brought out only by active repentance. It is to be understood that everyone as to his spirit is in the spiritual world, in one of its societies, an evil man in an infernal society and a good man in a heavenly society; sometimes, when in deep meditation one also appears there. Moreover, as sound and, along with it, speech spread on the air in the natural world, affection and thought with it spread among societies in the spiritual world; there is correspondence, too, affection corresponding to sound and thought to speech.

[7] Third: Divine providence with the evil is a continual tolerance of evil, to the end that there may be a continual withdrawal from it. Divine providence with evil men is continual permission because only evil can issue from their life. For whether he is in good or in evil, man cannot be in both at once, nor by turns in one and the other unless he is lukewarm. Evil of life is not introduced into the will and through this into the thought by the Lord but by man, and this is named permission.

[8] Inasmuch as everything which an evil man wills and thinks is by permission, the question arises, what in this case divine providence is, which is said to be in the least things with every person, evil or good. It consists in this, that it exercises tolerance continually for the sake of its objective, and permits what helps to the end and nothing more. It constantly observes the evils that issue by permission, separates and purifies them, and rejects what is unsuitable and discharges it by unknown ways. This is done principally in man's interior will and through it in his interior thought. Divine providence also sees to it constantly that what must be rejected and discharged is not received again by the will, since all that is received by the will is appropriated to the man; what is received by the thought, but not by the will, is set aside and banished. Such is the constant divine providence with the evil; as was said, it is a continual tolerance of evil to the end that there may be continual withdrawal from it.

[9] Of these activities man knows scarcely anything, for he does not perceive them. The chief reason why he does not, is that the evils come from the lusts of his life's love, and are not felt to be evils but enjoyments, to which one does not give thought. Who gives thought to the enjoyments of his love? His thought floats along in them like a skiff carried along by the current of a stream; and he perceives a fragrant air which he inhales with a deep breath. Only in one's external thought does one have a sense of the enjoyments, but even in it he pays no attention to them unless he knows well that they are evil. More will be said on this in what follows.

[10] Fourth: Withdrawal from evil is effected by the Lord in a thousand most secret ways. Only some of these have been disclosed to me, and only the most general ones. For instance, the enjoyments of lusts, of which man knows