Verses 1-2. That all come to the Lord for instruction who are desirous to be delivered from their natural evils, but that it is otherwise with those who have no such desire.

Verses 3-8. Therefore the Lord came into the world to establish a new spiritual Church, in the place of the celestial Church which perished, in which spiritual Church a good might be formed superior to that of the celestial Church.

Verses 8-11. In which Church too the. affection of truth might be excited, and thus by inquisition and self-examination the knowledges of truth, which had been lost, might be restored, and might be thus seen in greater lustre than before.

Verses 11-17. Which knowledges of truth are often perverted by application to evils of life, in which case they are taken away, and man becomes enslaved by evil cravings.

Verses 17-20. Until through Divine mercy he is excited to repentance of heart and humiliation.

Verse 20. On which occasion he is elevated to a perception of the supreme good of the Divine Love, and to all the blessing of reciprocal conjunction with it.

Verses 21-22. And through self-acknowledgement and self-abasement becomes gifted with general and primary truths, and is admitted to the blessedness of the conjunction of truth and good in the internal or spiritual man, and also in the external or natural man, and thus to regeneration.

Verse 23. Also to a participation of heavenly love and charity, together with heavenly consociation and joy.

Verse 24. Thus from being immersed in the love of infernal evil, he is elevated into the love of heavenly good, and from being destitute of the light of heavenly truth, he is made partaker of all its comforts.

Verses 25-29. But these blessings bestowed on the good of repentance excite the evil of envy in those, who are in meritorious good, and who therefore are incapable of tasting them.

Verses 29-30. Pleading their own innocence, and at the same time condemning those who have fallen away from innocence.

Verses 31-32. Until they are instructed, that it is agreeable to Divine order, that they who have departed from that order both in will and understanding should by repentance of heart and humiliation be restored to it, and to a participation of all its joy and gladness.