spiritual principle was perverted, when the Divine things proper to the Noetic dispensation ceased to be acknowledged; the wreck and disorder which resulted are represented to us by the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of mankind. The natural principle was perverted when the obedience proper to the Israelitish economy ceased to be observed: it was then that the fall of man became complete; this is shown in the termination of that external economy by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, that is, by the advent of Jehovah in His humanity.
Hence we learn that the cessation of each Church resulted from the perversion of that distinctive principle in man, for the development and maintenance of which the teachings of each Church had been mercifully provided; consequently the fall consisted in man successively perverting in himself the orderly use of each distinctive principle and purpose of human life. Thus, although the criminal acts which were perpetrated in the early ages of mankind were quite as bad as any that were committed in subsequent periods, yet, as in each of those periods such acts proceeded from the perversion of the different principles which were peculiar to each period, it is certain that there must have been a difference in the moral quallty of the enormities which prevailed; and, consequently, the evils perpetrated by the people of the first dispensation must have been more atrocious than those committed in succeeding times: the people sinned with more open eyes, and perverted the uses of a more interior principle than any enjoyed by their successors: hence the first dispensation perished by a catastrophe more terrible than that of any of the others. When then it is said that the fall of man was not completed until the Lord God of Israel visited to redeem His people, the meaning is that, at that time the orderly uses of all the
