night, or a craziness of imagination, from which things that are appear as if they were not, and things that are not, as if they were."[1]
Here then is a rational account of man's life from the one only life, also of the freedom whereby he perverts it into a real evil and continuing life of delusion and insanity. He has life from the only life, because he has been created and formed that he may be a receptacle of it. He receives the Divine love into his will, and the Divine wisdom into his understanding; and this in such a way by the very constitution of these receptacles that the love and wisdom appear to be his own, and he to act as of himself as the Lord does act of Himself. Whence it follows that he determines the inflowing life in freedom of will according to his thought; and that the recipient forms, or the will and understanding become conformed to the use he makes of the inflowing life. By virtue of the understanding he is an image of God, and by virtue of the will a likeness of God; and because these receptacles are from creation, and formed with every one in the womb, and are indestructible, when they are closed above and opened below, man is still an image and likeness but an inverted one, and his life a per-
- ↑ Athanasian Creed, n. 43.
