22. With the passage of time, though, the symbolic practices of the church, which were correspondences, were turned into idolatrous practices and even into magic. When this happened, the Lord’s divine providence saw to it that this knowledge was gradually erased, and among the people of Israel and Judah it became utterly lost and extinct.

The worship of those people, though, was still composed entirely of correspondences, so it represented heavenly realities even though they did not know what they meant. They were in fact completely earthly people and therefore neither wanted to know nor could know anything about spiritual things or, consequently, about correspondences.