4269. And ye shall also say, Behold thy servant Jacob is behind us; for he said, I will expiate his faces in a present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his faces; peradventure he will lift up my faces. That this signifies preparation for what follows, and that the present passed over before him signifies the effect, and also that he passed the night in that night in the camp signifies the things which follow, is evident from the several words in the internal sense, which manifestly imply preparation for his being kindly received. But how the case is with the particulars, cannot be unfolded to the apprehension, for so long as the generals are not known, the singulars of the same subject cannot fall into any light, but into mere shade. General notions must precede; and unless there are these, the singulars find no hospice where they may enter. In a hospice where there is mere shade, they are not seen; and in a hospice where there are falsities, they are either rejected, or suffocated, or perverted; and where there are evils, they are derided. It is sufficient that there be received these generals—that man must be regenerated before he can enter into the Lord’s kingdom (John 3:3); that until he is being regenerated, truth is apparently in the first place and good in the second; but that when he is being regenerated the order is inverted, and good is in the first place and truth in the second; also, that when the order is being inverted, the Lord so disposes and arranges in order in the natural or external man, that truth is there received by good, and submits itself to good, so that the man no longer acts from truth, but from good (that is, from charity); and further, that he acts from charity when he lives according to the truths of faith, and loves doctrine for the sake of life. The process of these things which are here contained in the internal sense in regard to the orderly arrangement, initiation, and submission of truth before good, appears before the angels in clear light; for such things are of angelic wisdom, although man sees nothing of them. Nevertheless they who are in simple good from simple faith are in the faculty of knowing these things; and if on account of worldly cares and gross ideas arising therefrom they do not apprehend them in the life of the body, they nevertheless do so in the other life, where worldly and bodily things are removed; for they are then enlightened and come into angelic intelligence and wisdom.