[2] As was shown above, the faith held by the general body in the church is an empty one, because it contains nothing of life from truth: it shall be briefly said here what saving faith is. Saving faith is to believe that the Lord is the Saviour of the world, and that He is the God of heaven and the God of earth, and that by His coming into the world He put Himself into the power of saving all those who receive truths from Him through the Word, and live according to them. But who those are who are able to receive truths from Him, and live according to them, was explained above (n. 803), that is, that they are those who shun evils as sins against the Word, and therefore against God. For by these means man's internal is purified, and this being purified, he is led of the Lord, and not of himself; and so far as man is led of the Lord, so far he loves truths and receives them, and also wills and does them. This faith is saving faith.

[3] By these words, "If any one hath an ear, let him hear," is meant particularly, that they should receive and believe that the Divine of the Lord is in His Human, that is, that His Human is Divine. Who can help wondering that the idea of the Divine Human of the Lord has been altogether destroyed in the Christian churches, especially among the learned there; and that no trace of it remains except among the simple? For the simple think of God as a man, and not, like the learned, as a spirit without a human form. The most ancient people, who were wiser than those of our days, had no other conception of God than as a man surrounded by radiant circles, as is clear from the writings of ancient times, and from their paintings and statues. Also all those who belonged to the church, from the time of Adam unto Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, thought of God as a man. They also saw Him under a human form, and called Him Jehovah, as is evident from the Word. And God under the human form is the Lord, as is clear from the Lord's words in John:

"Before Abraham was, I am" (viii. 58).

[4] That the inhabitants of this earth from early times had an idea of God-man, or of the Divine Human, is evident from their idols, also from the ideas of the Gentiles who thought and perceived interiorly, like the Africans. The same is evident from the inhabitants of almost all the earths, as may be seen in a small work concerning them. Man has such an idea of the Divine because it results from the influx of heaven. For in heaven no one can think of God except as being in a human form. If he thinks otherwise, his thought of God perishes, and he himself falls from heaven. This is because the form of heaven is the human form, and all the thought of the angels proceeds according to the form of heaven. And yet this idea of God, which is the chief of all ideas, is as it were extirpated among the learned of the world at this day; for when it is merely said that God is a man, they are unable to think it.

Hence it is that even from the first establishment of the church, they separated the Lord's Divine from His Human, from which it has come to pass that few persons when they think of the Lord, think of His Divine, but as of a man like themselves. No one, whoever he may be, who holds this idea of the Divine, can enter heaven, but is driven back as soon as he enters on the way that leads thither. This therefore is what is principally understood by "If any one hath an ear, let him hear."