24. The reason the knowledge of correspondences that gives access to the spiritual meaning of the Word was not discerned in later times was that the Christians of the early church were quite uneducated, so this knowledge could not be revealed to them. That is, if it had been revealed it would have been of no use to them and they would not have understood it.
After the early church, darkness spread over the whole Christian world as a consequence of papal rule; and the people who relied on papal authority and convinced themselves of its falsities neither could nor wanted to accept anything spiritual, including the correspondence of earthly things with spiritual things in the Word. If they had, they would have realized that Peter does not mean Peter but the Lord as the Rock. They would also have realized that the Word is divine all the way to its very heart and that a papal decree is of no importance by comparison.
After the Reformation heavenly truths were hidden away, because people began to differentiate between faith and caring and to worship God in three persons and therefore to worship three gods whom they thought were one; and if heavenly truths had been discovered, people would have distorted them and brought them down to the level of faith alone. They would not have associated any of those truths with caring and love, so they would have shut themselves out of heaven.
