54. III. That the third state of this church was a decline from true representative into idolatrous worship, and then was its vastation, or evening. Some observations were adduced above respecting the difference between representative worship and idolatrous worship, from which it may be plainly seen that so long as the types, figures, and signs, which were laid hold of by the senses of the body as objects of religion by the men of the Noachian and Israelitish Churches, were not at the same time regarded from a higher of interior idea, nearly approaching to a spiritual one, worship truly representative easily declined with them into idolatry. As for example: If they so thought of the tabernacle, as not to think at the same time of heaven and the church, and of God's dwelling-place in them; of the bread of faces therein, so as not to think at the same time of the heavenly bread for the nourishment of the soul; of the incense and the burning of it upon the golden altar there, in such a way as not to think at the same time about worship from faith and charity, as ascending to Jehovah as a grateful odor; about the lights in the lamps of the golden lampstand, when lighted, in such wise as not to think at the same time of the illumination of the understanding in the objects of their religion; and about the eating of the holy things, so that they did not at the same time think about the appropriation of heavenly foods, and also about the holy refreshment of their spirits by the performance of the sacrifices: and with the other things in like manner. It is hence evident, that, if the man of the representative church did not at the same time look upon the things belonging to that worship with a rational spirit enlightened by heavenly light from the Lord, but only with a rational spirit informed by the natural light (lumen) of the world from self, he could very easily be carried away from genuine representative worship into idolatrous worship, and so be vastated. For vastation is nothing else but a deviation, decline, and falling away from representative worship into idolatrous; which two kinds of worship are alike as to the external face, but not as to the internal face. [2] On account of this proneness to fall away from one worship which in itself was heavenly, into another which in itself was infernal, the interior things of the church and of religion could not be revealed before the Lord's Coming, and then it was by means of light from Him, namely, concerning heaven and hell, the resurrection, and the life of their spirits after death, and also the immortality of their souls, regeneration, and in brief the interior things respecting faith and charity; inasmuch as they would have looked upon them scarcely otherwise than as anyone looks at birds over the head, or meteors in the air. And moreover they would have involved them so deeply in the mere fallacies of the senses, that still not a single vestige of revealed spiritual things would have been visible, except as much as the tip of the nose in respect to the face, or a finger-nail in respect to the hands. They would also have so deformed them, that in the sight of the angels they would have appeared no otherwise than like a sea-monster clothed in a cloak, having a mitre on the head, and with a face, after being shaved and painted, like that of an ape which has a bald face. And they would also have appeared in the sight of the angels like a sculpture, furnished with movable joints and hollowed out; inside of which some man, a Levite, being admitted, it would walk about, act, and speak, and at length cry out to the superstitious multitude, "Prostrate yourselves; invoke me; behold me, your household tutelar God, to whom belongs holiness and divine power." [3] Could the ideas of the thought of these concerning the spiritual things of the church be superior to the ideas of thought of Nicodemus, who was a learned man, on regeneration, which was that the whole man would be re-born in the mother's womb; for he said: