8203. Certain spirits who were around me just now could not help understanding these words, and that God the Messiah is meant, as some of them even said. For this reason they also tried to draw my mind away from this point, but they did not succeed, as I also told them. For they were of the descendants of Jacob. 1747, the 23rd day of February (old calendar). [Jews] 8211. [Jer. 23:] verse 17. So speak all those who blot out faith by means of philosophy; for faith should go into knowledge, and acquire knowledge, to serve as its body, and thus as a fulcrum for the understanding; for without objects of memory, a person can hardly understand anything. But when philosophy acts as the soul, and the faith of truth as the body, so that one's faith is developed from philosophy as from the body, when it ought to be from the soul, the order is turned entirely upside-down, and so everything is distorted. Thus the heart is hardened, and they think "no evil shall come." They are in mere darkness and cold in respect to what is truly spiritual and heavenly. For a bodily soul, which philosophy thus becomes, cannot bring on anything but darkness and coldness.