*You raise a doubt, most reverend Sir, about power over all flesh being transferred to Christ,** when angels and heavenly beings do not have flesh, but bodies of light. On this point kindly accept favourably the following reply: In the passage referred to every man is understood by 'all flesh', and therefore in the Word it sometimes says 'all flesh' to mean every man. As for the bodies angels have, they do not appear luminous but as though they were flesh, for they are substantial and not material, and substantial things do not appear transparent before the angels. Everything material has originated from what is substantial. It is into this substantial that every man comes when by death he lays aside his material shell. This is the reason why man is a man after death, but purer, comparatively as the substantial is to the material.

That the Lord has power not only over all men but also over all angels, is clear from His words in Matthew xxviii 18, All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.

Since in your letter you mention the natural and the spiritual senses of the Word, therefore to guard against a belief that I have written anything contrary to these, I am attaching a sheet on which these two senses of the Word are described.

I remain etc. Eman. Swedenborg.

Amsterdam 8 November 1768

ON THE NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE WORD Hitherto it has been entirely unknown in the Christian world that in the Word there is an internal or spiritual sense within its external or natural sense like a precious stone in its matrix or a beautiful infant in its swaddling clothes, and as a result it has also been unknown what is understood by the Consummation of the Age, the advent of the Lord, the Last Judgment, and the New Jerusalem - matters, concerning which many things are said and predicted in the Word of both Testaments, the Old and the New.

Without the unfolding and unswathing of the sense of the letter of the Word by means of its spiritual sense, who can grasp with his understanding the least thing of what is meant by the things the Lord foretold in the 24th chapter of Matthew, and also in the Revelation or by the things in Daniel and in many places in the Prophets! Be so good as to try it. Read the prophetic Word here and there, where it deals now with wild animals and beasts, now with pools and marshes, now with woods and thickets, now with valleys and mountains, now with screech owls, howling creatures (ochim), wild beasts of the desert (tziim), satyrs, etc. Would you be able to perceive anything Divine in these things, unless you believed it to lie hidden within like a gem in its matrix, as just stated, and this because the Word is inspired by God? That the gems or precious things which lie hidden within are the things contained in the internal sense, has been fully shown in the DOCTRINE OF THE NEW JERUSALEM CONCERNING THE SACRED SCRIPTURE n. 5-26. It is also shown in that work that the literal sense of the Word is the basis, containant, and support of its spiritual sense, n. 27-36; further that the Divine Truth is in its fullness, its holiness, and its power in the sense of the letter of the Word, n. 37-49; as also that the doctrine of the Church is to be drawn from the sense of the letter of the Word and confirmed by that sense, n. 50-61; and still further that there is conjunction with the Lord and consociation with angels by means of the sense of the letter of the Word through the medium of its spiritual sense, n. 62-9.

To the above I wish to add something new from the spiritual world. The leaders of the Church who come into that world after death are first taught, with regard to the Sacred Scripture, that there is a spiritual sense within it, which was unknown to them in the world; and it is also told them that the angels of heaven are in that sense when a man is in the sense of the letter; and further that the translation or change of the sense of the letter into the spiritual sense takes place near to the man*** when he reads the Word in a holy manner, and that there is a certain unfolding or unswathing in like manner as when a shell around an almond is broken, and the shell is scattered and the bared almond passes into heaven and is received by angels. It is also as when a seed is cast into the earth, and is there bared of its coverings and puts forth a shoot. That seed is the Word in the sense of the letter, and the shoot from it is the spiritual sense. This sense passes on to the angels, while the sense of the letter remains dormant with the man. Nevertheless that seed remains with the man in his mind as in its soil, and in time it produces its sprout and this its fruit, provided the man is conjoined to the Lord, and thus consociated with angels, by means of the seeds of life, which are the truths of faith and the forms of goodness that are part of charity.

The leaders are further warned at all costs to accept the belief that the Word is spiritual within, because it is Divine, and that unless they have accepted this belief they call be seduced by satans, to the point of denying the holiness of the Word; and if this is denied, the Church with them disappears. It is also impressed upon them that if they do not believe in this internal sense of the Word, the Word may at last appear to them like an ill-formed and clumsy writing, or like a book of all heresies, since from its sense of the letter as from some pool or other heresies of all kinds may be drawn, and confirmed by means of it.

Later those who believe in the internal sense of the Word are received into companies of angelic spirits who are afterwards lifted up into heaven and become angels. But those who do not believe are sent away to companies of spirits who are afterwards cast into hell and become satans. Those are called satans there who in the world had falsified every truth of the Word, and are therefore so imbued with falsehoods that they no longer see the least thing of truth.****

* At the beginning of October 1768 Swedenborg dispatched three copies of DE AMORE CONJUGIALI to Oetinger, who wrote on the 28th of that month to say he had not received them. In his reply Swedenborg included the document entitled DE SENSU NATURALI ET SPIRITUALI VERBI. The Latin text of this letter and its enclosure is based on what appeared in J. F. I. Tafel's Sammlung (1839). ** i.e. John xvii 2. *** prope hominem, i.e. in his spiritual environment. **** Further correspondence is known to have passed between Swedenborg and Oetinger, but none of it is extant; nor has Swedenborg's reply to the letter of 16 December 1767 survived.