2736. THAT SCIENCES CONTRIBUTE NOTHING TO SALVATION, BUT RATHER CONFUSE [AND] DISTORT IDEAS. I conversed with spirits concerning this: that the sciences do not contribute to salvation, but only the knowledges of truth out of the Lord's Word, are [what contribute] - and that this may be compared to the knowledge of the human body, as to anatomies, the blood, all the constitution of the rest, [which knowledge] contributes nothing to the preservation of health; so that he who understands nothing of these things, still lives as healthy as he who during all his life has been intent on these studies. Likewise intellectual health [soundness] [sanitas] may be possessed in much greater degree by those who know nothing of the understanding and its faculties, than by him who has studied these things all his life, and confused with hypotheses, and scholastics. - 1748, August 4.