[2] There are many at the present day who do not believe anything unless they know it to be so from reason, as is made quite clear from the fact that few believe in the Lord, although they make lip confession of belief for the reason that the doctrine of faith so teaches. Nevertheless they tell themselves and one another that if they knew it could be so they would believe. The reason they do not believe and yet say this is that the Lord was born as any other is born and to outward appearance was like any other. These people cannot possibly receive any faith unless they first of all grasp in some measure how it can be so. This is why these matters have been explained. Those who believe the Word in simplicity do not need to know all these details because they have already arrived at the end which those who have just been described cannot reach except by becoming acquainted with such details.

[3] What is more, these are the details which are contained in the internal sense, and the internal sense is the Word of the Lord in heaven. Those who are in heaven perceive it in this fashion. When someone is in touch with the truth, that is, with the internal sense, he is able to make one as to thought with those in heaven, even though his ideas are by comparison very general and very obscure. The celestial ones there, who possess faith itself, see that those things are so from good, whereas the spiritual ones see the same from truth. The spiritual ones are also confirmed, and in that way perfected, by such things as are contained in the internal sense, that confirmation being achieved however by means of thousands of interior reasons which cannot flow into man's pattern of thought so as to be perceived there.