Ezechiele 1:26
To many Protestant and Evangelical Italians, the Bibles translated by Giovanni Diodati are an important part of their history. Diodati’s first Italian Bible edition was printed in 1607, and his second in 1641. He died in 1649. Throughout the 1800s two editions of Diodati’s text were printed by the British Foreign Bible Society. This is the more recent 1894 edition, translated by Claudiana.
Apocalypse Revealed #776
776. Someone who does not know the symbolic meanings of gold, silver, precious stones, pearls, fine linen, purple, silk, scarlet, thyine wood, 1 ivory vessels, precious wood, bronze, iron, marble, and vessels in general, cannot but wonder that these things are listed, and may think they are simply words piled up to enhance the matter. But it can be seen from our explanations that not one single word is without meaning, and that the words constitute a full description of the fact that those Roman Catholics who have confirmed themselves in the dogmas of that religion possess not one single truth, and if not one single truth, then not one single good that is a good of the church.
[2] I have spoken with Roman Catholics who have confirmed themselves in that religion, even with some who were legates at the Council of Nicaea, 2 the Lateran Council, 3 and the Council of Trent, 4 and to begin with they believed that what they had decided were pure and sacred truths. After being instructed, however, and being granted then an enlightenment from heaven, they confessed that they did not see one truth. But because they had confirmed themselves in their decrees more than others, following their state of enlightenment - which they themselves extinguished - they returned to their prior faith.
They believed especially that what they had decreed regarding baptism and justification were truths. Yet when they were still in a state of enlightenment, they saw, and from that enlightened sight confessed, that no one derives original sin from Adam, but from the successive generations of his own ancestry, and that this is not taken away in baptism by the imputation and application of the Lord's merit; that an imputation and application of the Lord's merit is a man-made fiction, because it is impossible; and that faith is never infused into any infant at its mother's breast, because faith requires thought.
[3] They saw that baptism is a still a holy sacrament, because it serves as a sign and reminder that a person can be regenerated by the Lord through truths from the Word - as a sign for heaven, and a reminder for the person - and that by baptism a person is introduced into the church, as by crossing the Jordan the children of Israel were introduced into the land of Canaan, and as the inhabitants of Jerusalem were prepared to receive the Lord by the baptism of John. For without that sign in heaven in the sight of angels, the Jews could not have continued and gone on living at the coming of Jehovah, that is, of the Lord in the flesh.
Similar to this was what they had decreed regarding justification.
That no imputation of the Lord's merit occurs or is possible may be seen in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord 18.
Also, that the evil heredity called original sin is derived not from Adam, but from the successive generations of a person's ancestry - this may be seen in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Providence 277. What Adam means in the Word may be seen in no. 241 of that same work.
Footnotes:
1. Thyine wood has not been identified. It has been associated with citron wood, and also with scented wood in general.
2. Probably the First Council of Nicaea, convened in 325, rather than the Second Council of Nicaea, convened in 787. Although True Christian Religion 176 refers to both councils, in the doctrines references to Nicaea are almost always to the first.
3. Five ecumenical Lateran Councils, defined as such, were convened, the first in 1123, the second in 1139, the third in 1179, the fourth in 1215, and the fifth in 1512-17. A number of other, non-ecumenical councils were also held in the Lateran Palace of the Vatican, the last in 1725, and it may be to this that the text refers.
4. Convened 1545-63 in twenty-five sessions under three successive popes.
Apocalypse Revealed #470
470. And he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land. This symbolically means that the Lord has the entire church under His auspices and governance, both those people in it who concern themselves with its external elements, and those in it who concern themselves with its internal ones.
The sea and land symbolize the entire church - the sea the external church, or those people who concern themselves with its external elements, and the land the internal church, or those people who concern themselves with its internal ones (no. 398). To set His feet on them means, symbolically, to have all these subject to Him, thus to have them under His Divine auspices and governance.
Since the Lord's church on earth is beneath the heavens, therefore it is called His footstool, as in the following passages:
He cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel...; He does not remember His footstool... (Lamentations 2:1)
...the earth is My footstool. (Isaiah 66:1)
Let us go into His tabernacle; let us worship at His footstool. (Psalms 132:7)
...do not swear... by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool. (Matthew 5:34-35)
I will make the place of My feet honorable. (Isaiah 60:13)
You have made Him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under His feet... (Psalms 8:6)
These things are said of the Lord.
He placed His right foot on the sea and His left on the land because those people who concerned themselves with the external elements of the church did not confirm falsities in themselves to the same extent as those who concerned themselves with its internal elements.
