353. To this I will append two narrative accounts. Here is the first:

I was once in the midst of angels and overheard their conversation. They were talking about intelligence and wisdom, saying that a person has no other perception than that these are both in him, consequently that whatever he thinks with his intellect and intends from his will is from him - even though not a bit of it is from the person, beyond a capacity to receive those things having to do with the intellect and will from God. Moreover, because every person is inclined from birth to love himself, they said, to keep a person from perishing from love of self and a conceit in his own intelligence, it has been provided from creation that that love in a man be transferred to his wife, and that it be implanted in her from birth to love the intelligence and wisdom of her husband and thus the man. That is why a wife continually draws her husband's conceit in his own intelligence to herself, extinguishing it in him and causing it to live in her, thus turning it into conjugial love and filling it with gratifications beyond measure. This has been provided by the Lord, they said, to keep a man from becoming so infatuated with his own intelligence that he believes himself to be intelligent and wise from himself rather than from the Lord, thus wishing to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and suppose himself on that account to be like God, and also God Himself, as said and urged by the serpent, which symbolized the love of one's own intelligence. After eating of the tree, man was therefore expelled from Paradise, and a cherub guarded the way to the tree of life. ¹ (Paradise, in its spiritual meaning, is intelligence. To eat of the tree of life is, spiritually, to be intelligent and wise from the Lord. And to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is, spiritually, to be intelligent and wise from self.)

Poznámky pod čarou:

6637. 'These are the names of the children of Israel' means the essential nature of the Church. This is clear from the meaning of' the name as the essential nature, dealt with in 144, 145, 1754, 1896, 2009, 2628, 2724, 3006, 3421; from the representation of 'the sons of Israel' as spiritual truths, dealt with in 5414, 5879, 5951; and from the representation of 'Israel' as the good of truth, which is spiritual good, dealt with in 3654, 4598, 5803, 5806, 5812, 5817, 5819, 5826, 5833. Since Israel' represents the good of truth or spiritual good and 'his sons' represent spiritual truths in the natural, 'the sons of Israel' also represent the Church, for what makes it the Church is spiritual good and the truths that spring from that good. A person without spiritual good, that is, the good of charity, and without spiritual truths, that is, the truths of faith, does not belong to the Church in spite of having been born within the Church. The whole of the Lord's heavenly kingdom possesses the good of love and faith, and unless the Church possesses good like that it cannot be the Church since it is not joined to heaven; for the Church is the Lord's kingdom on earth.

[2] The term 'Church' is not used because it is the place where the Word is and teachings drawn from it, or because it is where the Lord is known and the sacraments are celebrated. Rather it is the Church because it lives in accordance with the Word or with teachings drawn from the Word, and seeks to make those teachings its rule of life. People who do not live like this do not belong to the Church but are outside it; and those who lead wicked lives, thus lives contrary to that teaching, are further away outside the Church than gentiles who know nothing whatever about the Word, the Lord, or the sacraments. For since those people are acquainted with the forms of good that the Church fosters and with the truths it teaches they annihilate the Church within themselves, something gentiles cannot do because they are unacquainted with those things. It should also be realized that everyone who leads a good life, in charity and faith, is a Church, and is a kingdom of the Lord. He is for that reason also called a temple, and a house of God too. Those who are Churches individually, no matter how remote from one another they may be, constitute one Church collectively. This then is the Church meant by the expression 'the children of Israel' here and in what follows.