Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/143

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THE DOCTRINE OF THE LORD.
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from the mother, like itself. Since this is so with man, it is evident that it must have been especially the case with the Lord. His inmost was the very Divine, for it was Jehovah Himself; for He was His only begotten Son. And as the inmost was the very Divine, could not this, more than in the case of any man, make the external which was from the mother an image of itself, that is, like to itself, thus make Divine the human which was external and from the mother? And this by His own power, because the Divine, which was inmost, from which He operated into the human, was His; as the soul of man, which is the inmost, is his. And as the Lord advanced according to Divine order, His Human when He was in the world He made Divine Truth, and afterwards when He was fully glorified He made it Divine Good, thus one with Jehovah. (A. C. n. 6716.)

The Glorification.

The Lord successively and continually, even to the last of His life when He was glorified, separated from Himself and put off what was merely human, namely, that which He derived from the mother; until at length He was no longer her Son, but the Son of God, as well in respect to nativity as conception, and was one with the Father, and was Himself Jehovah. (A. C. n. 2649.)

The external man is nothing else than a something instrumental or organic, having no life in itself, but receiving life from the internal man; from which the external man appears to have life of itself With the Lord, however, after He had expelled the hereditary evil, and thus had purified the organic substances or vessels of the human essence, these also received life; so that as the Lord was life with respect to the internal man, He became life also as to the external man. This is what is signified by glorification in John: "Jesus said, Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him" (xiii. 31, 32). And again: "Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee. . . . And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was" (xvii. 1, 5). And again: Jesus said, "Father, glorify Thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I both have glorified it, and will glorify it again (xii. 28). (ib. n. 1603.)

The Lord, by the most grievous temptation combats, reduced all things in Himself into Divine order; insomuch that there remained nothing at all of the human which He had derived from the mother. So that He was not made new as another