A church cannot serve two masters. It cannot peacefully coexist with truths and falsities. To want to live with both and to seek a compromise will cause the church to be laid to waste. The church will perish, and the goods and truths of the Word will be taken away from it.

In Genesis 8:22, this signifies the alternating states in intellectual matters of a regenerate person. (Arcana Coelestia 936)

In Isaiah 13:6 and Jeremiah 6:4, this stands for the state associated with that particular time. (Arcana Coelestia 23, 487)