456. But the rest of mankind, who were not killed in these plagues. (9:20) This symbolizes people in the Protestant Reformed Church who were not as spiritually dead as the former were because of their illusory reasonings and love of self, a conceit in their own intelligence, and the attendant lusts, and yet who made faith alone the chief tenet of their religion.

The rest of mankind mean people who are not like those described, but who still make faith alone the chief tenet of their religion. Their not being killed symbolizes people not so spiritually dead. The plagues in which the former were killed mean a love of self, a conceit in their own intelligence, and the attendant lusts for evil and falsity, because these three are symbolized by fire, smoke and brimstone, as discussed above in nos. 452, 453. We will see below that plagues have this symbolism. But first we must say something about the people:

[2] I have been given to see these people, too, and to speak with them. They live in the northern zone over to the west. Some of them have huts there with roofs, others huts without roofs. Their beds are made of rushes, their clothes of goats' hair. Seen in the light that flows in from heaven, their faces have a leaden color and also lack vitality. The reason is that they know nothing more from their religion than that there is a God, that there are three persons, that Christ suffered the cross for them, and that they are saved by means of faith alone, and in addition by worship in churches and prayers at set times. To anything else pertaining to religion and its tenets they pay no attention. For the worldly and personal concerns that occupy and fill their minds shut their ears to them.

Many of them were church elders, and I asked them what their thinking was when they read about works, love and charity, fruits, precepts for life, repentance - in word, about things that must be done. They replied that they had indeed read these things and so had seen them, but still did not see them, because they kept their mind focused on faith alone. Consequently they said that these all constitute faith, and that they did not think of them as being the effects of faith.

The ignorance and stupidity of people once they have embraced faith alone and made it the whole of their religion is such as to be scarcely believable, even though I have been given to witness it by a good deal of experience.

[3] That plagues symbolize spiritual plagues, which cause a person to die in spirit or as regards his soul, is apparent from the following passages:

Your rupture is hopeless, your plague severe... ...I will restore health to you and heal you of your plagues... (Jeremiah 30:12, 14, 17)

Everyone who goes by Babylon shall... hiss at all her plagues. (Jeremiah 50:13)

...plagues will come (to Babylon) in one day - death and mourning... (Revelation 18:8)

I saw... seven angels having the seven last plagues, by which the wrath of God is to be consummated. (Revelation 15:1, 6)

Woe to a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity... From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it. A wound and a scar and a fresh plague - these have not been expressed, bound up, or soothed with ointment. (Isaiah 1:4, 6)

In the day that Jehovah will bind up the fracture of His people and heal the wound of its plague. (Isaiah 30:26)

So, too, elsewhere, as in Deuteronomy 28:59, Jeremiah 49:17, Zechariah 14:12, 15, Luke 7:21, Revelation 11:6; 16:21.

450. Having breastplates that were fiery, hyacinthine and sulfurous. This symbolizes their fanciful and illusory arguments springing from a hellish love and their own intelligence, and from the attendant lusts.

Breastplates symbolize the arguments people use to do battle for faith alone (no. 436). Fire symbolizes heavenly love, and in an opposite sense, hellish love (nos. 452, 468, 494). Hyacinthine symbolizes intelligence springing from a spiritual love, and in an opposite sense, intelligence springing from a hellish love, which is one's own inherent intelligence, as explained below. And sulfur symbolizes lust arising from that hellish love and expressed through their own inherent intelligence (no. 452). It follows from this that breastplates fiery, hyacinthine and sulfurous have the symbolic meaning stated.

[2] The reason their arguments in defense of faith alone are thus described is that all those people who believe themselves to be justified by faith alone, which is to say, absolved from sins, never give any thought to repentance, and an impenitent person engages in nothing but sins. All sins, moreover, spring from and so draw their character from a hellish love, from one's own inherent intelligence, and from the attendant lusts; and people caught up in them not only act on them, but they also speak, indeed think and will, in conformity with them, and accordingly reason and argue in conformity with them. These are who they are because they are their life; but who they are is a devil, and their life a hellish one.

In actual fact, however, people who live a moral life solely for the sake of themselves and the world do not know this. The reason is that although they inwardly are such as described, in outward appearances they are like people who live a Christian life. But they should know that when anyone of them dies, he comes into his interior life, because it is the life of his spirit, and he is his internal self. Moreover, his inner character then accommodates his outward one to itself, and they become alike. Consequently the moral virtues of these people's life in the world then become like the scales of fish that are scraped away.

The case is altogether different with people who regard the precepts of a moral life as Divine, and who make them at the same time civil precepts because they are expressive of a love for the neighbor.

[3] Hyacinthine symbolizes intelligence springing from the affection of a spiritual love because this color takes its hue from the redness of fire and the whiteness of light; and fire symbolizes love, and light intelligence. This intelligence is symbolically meant by the hyacinthine blue in the coverings and veils of the tabernacle (Exodus 26:31, 36; 27:16), and in Aaron's ephod (Exodus 28:6, 15); by the cloth of hyacinthine blue placed on the ark, table, lampstand, and altar [in the tabernacle] when the people prepared to journey (Numbers 4:6-7, 9, 11-12); and by the blue stuff in Ezekiel 27:7, 24.

On other hand, intelligence springing from the affection of a hellish love is symbolically meant by hyacinthine in Ezekiel 23:

Oholah (or Samaria) played the harlot... and she doted on her lovers, the neighboring Assyrians, clothed in hyacinthine blue..., horsemen riding on horses. (Ezekiel 23:4-6)

Thus is described a church which by the reasonings of its own inherent intelligence had falsified the Word's truths.

And in Jeremiah:

They are altogether foolish and grow stupid; the teaching of vanities is wood. Beaten silver... is brought from Tarshish..., the work of the craftsman and the hands of the metalsmith; hyacinthine blue and purple are their clothing, all the work of skillful men. (Jeremiah 10:8-9)

The work of the craftsman and the hands of the metalsmith, and all the work of skillful men, symbolize here that they spring from their own inherent intelligence.