Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 8878

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8878. Of them that hate Me. That this signifies who absolutely reject the Divine of the Lord, is evident from the signification of "them that hate God," as being those who are in evil and thence in falsity, for these are they who reject the Divine of the Lord; and so far as they are in evil and thence in falsity, so far they not only reject it, but also hold it in hatred. That it is the Divine of the Lord which they reject, is because they who are in evil are not in heavenly light, but in natural light, and finally are in sensuous light which is from the corporeal. From this light they cannot possibly see the Human of the Lord otherwise than as human, for they cannot perceive what the Divine Human is, because they have an idea about the Divine that is utterly empty and worthless. If they are told that the Divine Itself is Divine love, that the Divine love is the being of all life, and that from conception the Lord was this love, which was thus the inmost being of His life, thus was Jehovah, and that He glorified His Human to the likeness of this, that is, made it Divine, all this may indeed be in some measure apprehended by those who are endowed with some intellectual penetration; but still they do not believe it, for when they descend from the intellectual light in which they then are, into their own natural and sensuous light, they fall into mere thick darkness in respect to this truth, and from this into denial.


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