975. (Verse 6) Because they have shed the blood of saints and of Prophets. That this signifies, because they have falsified the truths of the Word and of doctrine from the Word, is evident from the signification of blood, as denoting Divine truth (concerning which see n. 30, 328, 329, 476, 748) and from the signification of shedding it, as denoting to offer violence to Divine truth, which is to falsify it (seen. 329) and from the signification of saints, as denoting those who are in Divine truth from the Lord (see n. 204); but in the abstract sense, Divine truths from the Lord (n. 325); and because by saints are meant the Divine truths in the Word, therefore the Word is meant thereby; and from the signification of prophets, as denoting those who teach doctrine from the Word; and, in the abstract sense, the truths of doctrine from the Word (see n. 624). Hence, then, by shedding the blood of the saints and of the prophets, is signified to falsify the truths of the Word, and the truths of doctrine from the Word.

Continuation concerning the Fifth Precept:-

[2] It was said, that so far as man shuns evils as sins and turns away from them, so far he does good, and that the goods which he does are the good works meant in the Word, by reason of their being wrought in the Lord. Also, that these works are good, in so far as man turns away from the evils opposed to them, because they are so far done from the Lord, and not from man.

Works, however, are more or less good according to the excellence of uses, for works must be uses. The best are those that are done for the sake of uses to the church. In the quality of goodness follow those that are done for the sake of uses to one's native country, and so on. Uses determine the good quality of works. The good quality of works also increases with man according to the plenitude of the truths from whose affection they are done. For a man who turns away from evils as sins desires to know truths, because truths teach uses and the quality of their good. Hence it is that good loves truth, and truth loves good, and that they desire to be conjoined. In proportion, therefore, as such a man learns truths from affection for them, in the same proportion he does goods more wisely and more fully; more wisely, because he knows how to distinguish uses, and to do them with judgment and justice; and more fully, because all truths are present in the performance of uses and form a spiritual sphere, which the affection of them produces.

6465. 'And was gathered to his peoples' means that [spiritual good] was within the forms of good and the truths of the natural which sprang from itself. This is clear from what is said above in 6451, where similar words occur; see what has been brought forward there about the rise and the life of spiritual good, which is 'Israel', within the forms of good and the truths of the lower natural, which are 'his sons' and 'the twelve tribes'. To take further the idea of the rise of interior things within exterior ones, it should be recognized that all things, not only those with the human being but also those in the entire natural order, come into existence through a series of formations, so that posterior things are brought into existence by means of formations from prior things. Consequently each formation comes into existence as that which is separate from any other; yet the posterior is dependent on what is prior to it, so dependent that it cannot remain in existence without what is prior. For what is posterior is held in connection with and has its form preserved by what is prior. From this it may also be seen that what is posterior contains within itself all things that are prior to it in their proper order. It is like modes ¹ and the forces proceeding from those modes as underlying substances. This is how it is with a person's interiors and exteriors, and also how it is with the things that make up the life he has.

[2] Unless one conceives interior things and exterior things in a person as entities formed in the way just described, one cannot begin to have any idea of the external man and the internal man or of the flowing of the one into the other, let alone of the rise and the life of the interior man or the spirit, and of what that man is like when the external, the bodily part, is separated through death. If a person conceives exterior things and interior ones as a continuous progression into what is purer and purer, so that through that continuity they are inseparable, and are not therefore made distinct through a series of formations of posterior things from prior ones, that person cannot help supposing that when the external dies the internal dies too. For he thinks that they are inseparable, and because they are inseparable, continuing one into the other, that when one dies, so does the other; for one takes the other with it. These matters have been mentioned so that people may know that the internal and the external are distinct and separate from each other, and that interior things and exterior ones follow one another in consecutive order, also that all interior things exist together within exterior ones, or what amounts to the same, that all prior things exist within posterior ones, which is the subject in the internal sense of the verses under consideration here.

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