583. IV. The process of regeneration is on the model of a person's conception, gestation in the womb, birth and upbringing.

The natural and spiritual events in a person's life, that is, what happens to his body and what to his spirit, are so ordered as permanently to correspond. The reason is that a person is by birth spiritual as regards his soul, and he is clothed with a natural form which is constituted by his material body. When therefore this is laid aside, his soul, clothed in his spiritual body, comes into the world where all things are spiritual, and there associates with people like him. Now the spiritual body has to be formed in the material one, a process accomplished by the inflow of truths and various kinds of good from the Lord through the spiritual world. These are inwardly received by the person in such things belonging to the natural world as are called civil and moral; so it is evident how the process of formation takes place. Because, as already said, there is a permanent correspondence between the natural and spiritual events in a person's life, it follows that this process must resemble his conception, gestation in the womb, birth and upbringing. That is why natural births in the Word mean spiritual births, that is, the birth of good and truth. For whatever stands in the literal or natural sense of the Word, enfolds and stands for something spiritual. I demonstrated fully in the chapter on the Sacred Scripture that every detail of the literal sense of the Word contains a spiritual sense.

[2] The natural births mentioned in the Word refer to spiritual births, as is evident from the following passages.

We have conceived, we have given birth, we have as it were brought forth [wind], we have not done what is sound, Isaiah 26:18.

At the presence of the Lord you give birth ¹ , O earth, Psalms 114:7.

Has the earth given birth in one day? Shall I break and not bring to birth, and cause to give birth but close ² up the womb? Isaiah 66:7-10. Sin gives birth and No shall be on the point of being breached, Ezekiel 30:16.

The pangs of childbirth shall come upon Ephraim. He is an unwise child, because at the right time he does not stand in the womb of sons, Hosea 13:12-13.

There are many other similar passages. Since natural births in the Word mean spiritual births, and these are the Lord's work, He is called He who forms and brings out of the womb. This is clear from these passages among others:

Jehovah your maker and who forms you from the womb, Isaiah 44:2.

He who brings me from the womb, Psalms 22:9.

I have been placed upon you from the womb, from my mother's inmost parts it was you who brought me forth, Psalms 71:6.

Pay attention to me, you who were carried by the belly, borne by the womb, Isaiah 46:3.

This is why the Lord is called 'Father' (as at Isaiah 9:6; 63:16, John 10:30; 14:8-9), and those who are in possession of good and truth from Him are called 'sons', 'born of God' and 'brothers' among themselves (Matthew 23:8-9). It is also why the church is called 'mother' (Hosea 2:2, 5; Ezekiel 16:45).

फुटनोट:

421. And to him was given the key to the bottomless pit. This symbolizes their hell opened.

A key symbolizes the power to open, and also to close (nos. 62, 174, 840). And a bottomless pit symbolizes hell, where those people reside who have affirmed in themselves justification and salvation by faith alone, all of whom come from the Protestant Reformed Church. Here, however, they are people who appear in their own eyes and so in the eyes of many others to be educated and erudite - even though in the sight of angels in heaven they appear to be bereft of intellect as regards matters having to do with heaven and the church, since people who affirm such a faith, even so far as to affirm its inner tenets, close the higher constituents of their intellect, and this at last to such an extent that they can no longer see any spiritual truth in any light. The reason is that an affirmation of falsity constitutes a denial of the truth. Consequently, whenever they hear some spiritual truth, namely, a truth of the Word serviceable for doctrine and life for people of the church, they keep their mind in the falsities they have affirmed; and then they either shroud the truth they have heard in falsities or reject it as nothing but words, or they yawn at it and turn away, and this the more conceited they are owing to their erudition. For conceit glues the falsities together until they at last stick together, like solidified sea foam. The Word is therefore hidden from them, like a book sealed with seven seals.

[2] I will describe, furthermore, their character, and the character of their hell, because it has been given me to see it and speak with the inhabitants there, and also to see the locusts that issued from it:

That pit, which is like the mouth of a furnace, appears in the southern zone, and the abyss beneath it extends a great distance toward the east. The inhabitants in it have light, but if light from heaven is let in, the hell becomes dark. Consequently the pit is closed above.

Seen there are huts with arched roofs, built seemingly of brick, which are divided into several small rooms, and each room has in it a table, with sheets of paper lying on it, along with some books. At each table sits someone who in the world affirmed justification and salvation by faith alone, making charity a merely natural moral act, and deeds of charity simply those of civil life by which people are able to achieve rewards in the world; but if people should do those deeds for the sake of salvation, they condemn those deeds, and some of them do so severely, because the deeds have in them human reason and human will.

All the people in this abyss were educated and erudite in the world. And among them are some metaphysicians and scholastics who are held in higher esteem than the rest there. I recognized several when it was granted me to speak with them.

[3] Their fate, however, is this: When they are first admitted there, they sit in the first small rooms; but as they argue for faith to the exclusion of works of charity, they leave their former seats and go into little rooms nearer the east, and this repeatedly until they reach the end, where those people reside who use the Word to defend those tenets. And because they cannot help but falsify the Word then, their huts vanish, and they see themselves in a desert; and at that point they undergo such experiences as described in no. 153 above.

There is also another abyss beneath that abyss, where the residents are people who have similarly argued for justification and salvation by faith alone, but who within themselves, in their spirit, have denied God, and at heart have laughed at the sanctities of the church. They do nothing but argue there, tearing their garments, climbing up on the tables, stamping their feet and battling each other with invectives. And because no one is permitted to do physical harm there, they threaten vocally and shake their fists.

The environment there is unclean and squalid. But this a subject for another time.