450. Having breastplates that were fiery, hyacinthine and sulfurous. This symbolizes their fanciful and illusory arguments springing from a hellish love and their own intelligence, and from the attendant lusts.

Breastplates symbolize the arguments people use to do battle for faith alone (no. 436). Fire symbolizes heavenly love, and in an opposite sense, hellish love (nos. 452, 468, 494). Hyacinthine symbolizes intelligence springing from a spiritual love, and in an opposite sense, intelligence springing from a hellish love, which is one's own inherent intelligence, as explained below. And sulfur symbolizes lust arising from that hellish love and expressed through their own inherent intelligence (no. 452). It follows from this that breastplates fiery, hyacinthine and sulfurous have the symbolic meaning stated.

[2] The reason their arguments in defense of faith alone are thus described is that all those people who believe themselves to be justified by faith alone, which is to say, absolved from sins, never give any thought to repentance, and an impenitent person engages in nothing but sins. All sins, moreover, spring from and so draw their character from a hellish love, from one's own inherent intelligence, and from the attendant lusts; and people caught up in them not only act on them, but they also speak, indeed think and will, in conformity with them, and accordingly reason and argue in conformity with them. These are who they are because they are their life; but who they are is a devil, and their life a hellish one.

In actual fact, however, people who live a moral life solely for the sake of themselves and the world do not know this. The reason is that although they inwardly are such as described, in outward appearances they are like people who live a Christian life. But they should know that when anyone of them dies, he comes into his interior life, because it is the life of his spirit, and he is his internal self. Moreover, his inner character then accommodates his outward one to itself, and they become alike. Consequently the moral virtues of these people's life in the world then become like the scales of fish that are scraped away.

The case is altogether different with people who regard the precepts of a moral life as Divine, and who make them at the same time civil precepts because they are expressive of a love for the neighbor.

[3] Hyacinthine symbolizes intelligence springing from the affection of a spiritual love because this color takes its hue from the redness of fire and the whiteness of light; and fire symbolizes love, and light intelligence. This intelligence is symbolically meant by the hyacinthine blue in the coverings and veils of the tabernacle (Exodus 26:31, 36; 27:16), and in Aaron's ephod (Exodus 28:6, 15); by the cloth of hyacinthine blue placed on the ark, table, lampstand, and altar [in the tabernacle] when the people prepared to journey (Numbers 4:6-7, 9, 11-12); and by the blue stuff in Ezekiel 27:7, 24.

On other hand, intelligence springing from the affection of a hellish love is symbolically meant by hyacinthine in Ezekiel 23:

Oholah (or Samaria) played the harlot... and she doted on her lovers, the neighboring Assyrians, clothed in hyacinthine blue..., horsemen riding on horses. (Ezekiel 23:4-6)

Thus is described a church which by the reasonings of its own inherent intelligence had falsified the Word's truths.

And in Jeremiah:

They are altogether foolish and grow stupid; the teaching of vanities is wood. Beaten silver... is brought from Tarshish..., the work of the craftsman and the hands of the metalsmith; hyacinthine blue and purple are their clothing, all the work of skillful men. (Jeremiah 10:8-9)

The work of the craftsman and the hands of the metalsmith, and all the work of skillful men, symbolize here that they spring from their own inherent intelligence.

490. "And I will give power to my two witnesses." (11:3) This symbolizes those people who confess and acknowledge from the heart that the Lord is God of heaven and earth, whose humanity is Divine, and who are conjoined with Him by a life in accordance with the Ten Commandments.

These are the people meant here by the two witnesses because these two characteristics are the two essential elements of the New Church.

Regarding the first essential, that the Lord is God of heaven and earth, whose humanity is Divine - that this is a testimony, and therefore that those people are witnesses who confess and acknowledge this from the heart, may be seen in nos. 6 and 846, and still further from the following:

I am your fellow servant... of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus... For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. (Revelation 19:10)

(Michael's angels) overcame (the dragon) by the blood of the Lamb and by the Word of His testimony... And the dragon... went away to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. (Revelation 12:11, 17)

...the souls of those who had been beheaded because of the testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God... (Revelation 20:4)

These are people who have acknowledged the Lord.

The testimony is called the testimony of Jesus because the Lord attests to it on the authority of His Word, thus on the authority of Himself. Therefore He is called the faithful and true witness (Revelation 1:5; 3:14); and He says,

...I testify of Myself, (and) My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going. (John 8:14)

Also,

When the Counselor comes..., the spirit of truth..., it will testify of Me. (John 15:26)

The Counselor, the spirit of truth, which is also the Holy Spirit, is an emanating Divinity, and this is the Lord Himself, as may be seen in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord, nos. 46-54.

Now because the Lord Himself is the witness, therefore witnesses also mean people who bear the same testimony on behalf of the Lord, as in John:

(Jesus said,) "You have sent to John, and he was a witness to the truth. Yet I do not receive testimony from man... (John 5:33-34)

(John) came as testimony, to testify concerning the light... He was not that light, but was sent to testify concerning the light. (The Word that was with God, and was God,) was the true light... (John 1:1-2ff.; see also 1:14, 1:34)

[2] Regarding the second essential of the New Church, namely conjunction with the Lord by a life in accordance with the Ten Commandments - that this is a testimony is apparent from the fact that the Ten Commandments are called a testimony, as in the following:

You shall put into the ark the Testimony which I will give you. (Exodus 25:16)

...the Testimony...(Moses) put into the ark... (Exodus 40:20)

...the mercy seat that is upon the Testimony... (Leviticus 16:13)

(Leave the rods of the tribes) before the Testimony... (Numbers 17:4)

And so, too, elsewhere, as in Exodus 25:22; 31:7, 18; 32:15, Psalms 78:5; 132:12.

[3] We will say something here regarding conjunction with the Lord by a life in accordance with the Ten Commandments:

There are two tables on which these commandments were written, one for the Lord and one for mankind. The contents of the first table declare that several gods are not to be worshiped, but only one. The contents of the second table declare that evils are not to be done. When one God is worshiped and people do not do evils, conjunction takes place. For in the measure that a person desists from evils, that is, in the measure that he repents, he is in the same measure accepted by God and does good from God.

But who, now, is the one God? A trinal or triune God is not one God when the trine or trinity exists in three persons. But a God who has a trine or trinity in one person is one God, and that God is the Lord. Weave your ideas as you may, you still will not extricate from the tangle the existence of one God unless He is also one in person.

The fact of this is something the whole Word teaches, both the Old Prophetic Word and the New Apostolic Word, as may be clearly seen from The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord.