Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 2.djvu/69

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in an invisible Divine; for the former can see their Divine, but the latter cannot.


THE ANGELIC CONCEPTION OF GOD.

Because the angels have no conception of an invisible Divine which they call a Divine without form, but of a visible Divine in a human form, therefore it is common with them to say that the Lord alone is Man; and that they are men from Him; and that every one is a man so far as he receives the Lord. By receiving the Lord they understand receiving good and truth which are from Him, since the Lord is in his own good and truth. This also they call intelligence and wisdom. They say that every one knows that intelligence and wisdom make the man, and not the face without them. This is manifest also from the angels of the interior heavens. Because they are in good and truth from the Lord, and thence in wisdom and intelligence, they are therefore in the most beautiful and most perfect human form; whilst the angels of the inferior heavens are in a form less perfect and less beautiful.

It is the opposite in hell. Those there, when viewed in the light of heaven, scarcely appear as men but as monsters; for they are not in good and truth, but in evil and the false, and thence in the opposites of intelligence and wisdom. Therefore also their life is not called life, but spiritual death.

Because the whole heaven and every part of it resem-