to reason concerning faith, is to doubt and deny. And as it is all from self or their Own, they sink into mere falsities, consequently into an abyss of thick darkness, that is, of falsities, and when they are in this abyss the smallest objection prevails over a thousand truths, just as a minute particle of dust in contact with the pupil of the eye shuts out the universe and everything it contains. Of such persons the Lord says in Isaiah:—
Woe unto those who are wise in their own eyes, and intelligent before their own faces (v. 21).
And again:—
Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath turned thee away, and thou hast said in thine heart, I, and none else besides me; and evil shall come upon thee, thou shalt not know from whence it riseth, and mischief shall fall upon thee, which thou shalt not be able to expiate, and vastation shall come upon thee suddenly, of which thou art not aware (xlvii. 10, 11).
In Jeremiah:—
Every man is made stupid by knowledge (scientia), every founder is confounded by the graven image, for his molten image is falsehood, neither is there breath in them (li. 17).
A "graven image" is the falsity, and a "molten image" the evil, of man's Own.
216. And they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves girdles. To "sew leaves together," is to excuse themselves; the "fig-tree" is natural good; and to "make themselves girdles," is to be affected with shame. Thus spake the most ancient people, and thus they described this posterity of the church, signifying that instead of the innocence they had formerly enjoyed, they possessed only natural good, by which their evil was concealed; and being in natural good, they were affected with shame.
217. That the "vine" is used in the Word to signify spiritual good, and the "fig-tree" natural good, is at this day utterly unknown, because the internal sense of the Word has been lost; nevertheless, wherever these expressions occur, they signify or involve this meaning; as also in what the Lord spake in parables concerning a "vineyard" and a "fig-tree;" as in Matthew:—
