OPENING OF SPIRITUAL SIGHT
its very life, which does not at all appear from the sense of the letter; but the arcana are so many that volumes would not be sufficient for unfolding them. Here only a few are declared, and such as may prove that regeneration is here treated of, and that this proceeds from the external man to the internal. Thus the angels understand the Word. They know nothing at all which is of the letter, not even one word of what it proximately signifies, still less the names of countries, cities, rivers, and persons, which occur so frequently in the historic and prophetic parts. They have only an idea of the things signified by words and names; as, by Adam in Paradise they have a perception of the Most Ancient Church, and not of the Church itself, but of the faith toward the Lord of that Church; by Noah, the Church remaining with posterity and continued to the time of Abram; by Abraham, not the man who lived, but the saving faith which he represented; and so on. Thus they perceive things spiritual and celestial, altogether abstracted from words and names."
An appropriate beginning is this of the work to which Swedenborg was to devote the remaining
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