26. The "likeness of God," according to which man was made, is his being able to live, that is, to will, to love, and to intend, as also to think, to reflect, and to choose, in all appearance as from himself; consequently, in his being able to receive from God those things which are of love and those things which are of wisdom, and to reproduce them in a likeness from himself as God does; for God says:
Behold the man was as one of us, in knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:22);
for, without the faculty of receiving and reproducing those things which proceed into him from God, in all appearance as from himself, man would be no more a "living soul" than an oyster in its shell at the bottom of a stream, which is not in the least able to move itself out of its place. Nor would he be any more an "image of God" than a jointed statue of a man capable of motion by means of a handle, and of giving forth sound by being blown into; yea, the very mind of man, which is the same as his spirit, would actually be wind, air, or ether, according to the idea of the church at this day respecting spirit. For without the faculty of receiving and reproducing the things flowing in from God, altogether as from himself, he would not have anything of his own, or a proprium, except an imperceptible one, which is like the proprium of a lifeless piece of sculpture. But more about the image and likeness of God with man, may be seen, in a Relation in the preceding work, of which this is the Appendix (n. 48).
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