THE LORD ALONE IS LOVE ITSELF, BECAUSE LIFE ITSELF; WHILE MEN AND ANGELS ARE ONLY RECIPIENTS.

This has already been illustrated by many things, to which the following only are to be added. The Lord, because He is the God of the universe, is uncreate and infinite, but men and angels are created and finite. The uncreate and infinite is the Very Divine in itself. Out of this man cannot be formed, for in such case he would be the Divine in itself; but he can be formed out of things created and finite, in which the Divine can be, and to which it can communicate its own life, and this by heat and light from itself as a sun, thus from its own Divine love; comparatively as it is with germinations in the earth, which cannot be formed from the very essence of the sun of the world, but must needs be formed out of created things of which soil is composed, within which the sun can be by its heat and light, and to which it can communicate its life. From this it is plain that a man and an angel are not in themselves life, but are only recipients of life. From all this it also follows, that the conception of man from his father is not a conception of life, but only of a first and purest form capable of receiving life; to which, as a stamen or initiament, substances and matters, succeeding one another, add themselves in the womb, in forms adapted to the reception of life in their own order and their own degree, even to the last, which is suited to the modes of the nature of the world.