2423. 'Behold now, your servant has found grace in your eyes' means a state of humility resulting from the affection for truth, and 'you have magnified your mercy' means a likeness of a state of humility resulting from the affection for good. This becomes clear from what has been stated already about grace and mercy in 598, 981. For people governed by an affection for truth are not able to humble themselves sufficiently so as to acknowledge from the heart that all things are attributable to mercy; and this being so, instead of mercy they speak of grace. Indeed the less the affection for truth is in them, the less humility there is within their mention of grace. On the other hand the more affection for good exists with someone the more humility there is within his mention of mercy. This shows how broad the difference is in the adoration and consequently the worship between those governed by the affection for truth and those governed by the affection for good. For in order that worship may exist, adoration must exist, and in order that adoration may exist humility must do so too. This applies to every single aspect of worship. From this it is evident why both grace and mercy are mentioned here.

981. That 'God blessed' means the Lord's presence and grace is clear from the meaning of 'blessing'. In the Word, in the external sense, 'blessing' means being enriched with all earthly and bodily good. This is also how all people who keep to the external sense explain the Word, as Jews did in the past, and still do so today, and also as Christians do, especially at the present time. Consequently they have focused the Divine blessing, and still do, on wealth, on having plenty of everything, and on personal glory. But in the internal sense 'blessing' means being enriched with all spiritual and celestial good, a blessing which neither does nor can possibly exist unless it comes from the Lord. This is why 'blessing' means the Lord's presence and grace. The Lord's presence and grace carry such blessing within them. The expression 'presence' is used because the Lord is present only in charity, and the subject at this point is the regenerate spiritual man who acts from charity. The Lord is present with everyone, but as is a person's distance from charity, so is the degree of the Lord's presence, or so is He, let me say, more absent, that is, the Lord is more remote.

[2] The reason the expression grace and not mercy is used - a reason, I presume, that has remained unknown up to now - is that celestial people do not talk of grace but of mercy, while spiritual people talk not of mercy but of grace. This difference has its origins in the fact that celestial people acknowledge that the human race is wholly unclean, and in itself excrementitious and hellish, on account of which they plead for the Lord's mercy - mercy being the appropriate word for people in this condition.

[3] Spiritual people however, though they are aware that the human condition is such, do not acknowledge it, for they still remain in, and love, their proprium; and therefore they find it difficult to make mention of mercy but easy to do so of grace. It is the different kind of humility existing with each that produces this verbal difference. The more anyone loves himself and imagines that he is able to do good of himself and so merit salvation, the less he is able to plead for the Lord's mercy. The reason some [are able to plead] for grace at all is that it has become a commonplace expression. When used however it contains little that is the Lord's and much that is a person's own. This anyone can discover in himself when he uses the expression 'the grace of the Lord'.