758. 18:3 "For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her licentiousness, and the kings of the earth have committed whoredom with her." This symbolically means that Roman Catholics have produced nefarious dogmas, dogmas that are adulterations and profanations of the Word's goodness and truth, and have imbued with them all those born and brought up in the kingdoms under their domination.

That this is the symbolic meaning of these words can be seen from the explanations in nos. 631, 632 and 720, 721 above, where similar imagery occurs, and we have no need to add more, except to say that similar statements regarding Babel are made in Jeremiah:

Babylon was a golden cup in Jehovah's hand, that made all the earth drunk. The nations drank of her wine; therefore they are deranged. (Jeremiah 51:7)

And:

Babylon shall become... a hissing... When they are inflamed I will lay their feasts; I will make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep and not awake. (Jeremiah 51:37, 39)

The wine that they drink that makes them drunk symbolizes their dogmas, and how nefarious these are may be seen in no. 753 above. One of those dogmas is this nefarious one, that the works people do in conformity with their tenets earn merits, by causing the Lord's merit and righteousness to be transcribed into the works and thus into them. And yet every bit of charity, and every bit of faith, or all good and truth, comes from the Lord, and what comes from the Lord continues to be the Lord's in its recipients. For what comes from the Lord is Divine, which can never become a person's own.

Something Divine can be present in a person, but not in his native self, for a person's native self is nothing but evil. Therefore someone who claims for himself something Divine as his own, not only defiles it, but also profanes it. Something Divine from the Lord is kept carefully separate from a person's native self, being elevated above it and never immersed in it.

But because Roman Catholics have transferred all the Lord's Divinity to themselves, and so have appropriated it as their own, it flows like rainwater mixed with pitch, from a fountain of tar.

The case is the same with the dogma that justification is real sanctification, and that their saints are holy in themselves, even though the Lord alone is holy (Revelation 15:4).

For more on the subject of merit, see The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine (London, 1758), nos. 150-158! Could not find a match for this book: nos. .

9656. 'And they shall be paired from below, and at the same time paired up to its head' means a joining together from without and from within. This is clear from the meaning of 'being paired' as being made to act jointly; from the meaning of 'from below' as from without, since the Word portrays what exists outwardly as that which is below, and what exists inwardly as that which is above, 3084, 4599, 5146, 8325 (so that things deep down are more outward and those high up more inward, 2148, 4210, 4599); and from the meaning of 'the head', in the expression 'from below up to the head', as from within. The reason why 'the head' has this meaning is that the head is above the body, and by things above are meant those that are inward, as has just been stated; and in addition to this a person's inward powers are located in the head, for in it reside the beginnings of the senses and motions, and the beginnings are inmost because they are the source from which everything else flows. These beginnings are like wellsprings from which streams of water flow.

[2] This also goes to explain why inward things are portrayed in the Word as 'the head', as in Isaiah,

Jehovah will cut off from Israel head and tail, the branch and the bulrush in one day. Isaiah 9:14.

In the same prophet,

There will not be for Egypt [any] work which the head and tail, branch and bulrush will do. Isaiah 19:15.

This refers to the Church, the inward things of which are 'the head' and the outward ones 'the tail'.

[3] In the same prophet,

On all heads there is baldness; every beard is shaved off. Isaiah 15:2.

'Baldness on heads' stands for the absence of good and truth in inward things, 'beard shaved off' for the absence of good and truth in outward things. In Jeremiah,

You will be put to shame by Egypt, as you were put to shame by Asshur, and your hands will be on your head. For Jehovah has loathed your defences. Jeremiah 2:36-37.

This describes shame on account of the loss of the Church's forms of good and its truths, brought about by factual knowledge and by reasonings based on it, 'Egypt' being factual knowledge and 'Asshur' reasoning based on it. 'Hands on head' stands for covering over inward things owing to shame. Something similar occurs elsewhere in the same prophet,

They were put to shame and subjected to ignominy, and they covered their heads. Jeremiah 14:3-4; 2 Samuel 13:19.