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love is eternal and unchangeable. He has always been acting from this love, as well before he came as since he came. Let us see then what this love led him to do or endeavour to do before he came. The nature of it was such as to lead him to communicate or to endeavour to communicate of his own unto others without limit, or, in other words, infinitely. It was such as to lead him to give without measure. It was also such as to lead him to endeavour to make angels and men receive all that he gave. His love was infinite, and it set no limit to itself. There was no limit on his part. There was no limit to his giving nor to his endeavour that others should receive. Consequently it may be proper for us to say, that in the greatness of his love he was always endeavouring to produce a divine man-that he was always endeavouring to make of the whole heaven one divine man— that he was always endeavouring to make of every angel a divine man-and that he was always endeavouring to make of every individual upon earth a divine man. There was nothing wanting on his part. As was said before, he gave without measure, and he endeavour

ed to make them receive without measure. The limit was with them; They were finite creatures and could not

the measure was with them.

be made infinite.

They were also imperfect and did not suffer them

selves to be made perfect.

But successive generations became more and more imperfect, and the time was approaching when they would not be able to receive any thing that he gave, and therefore could not be saved. On this account he came into the world.

And he came by uniting himself with a human body and the externals of a human mind; for we learn from the Sacred Scripture that he had a human mother, but not a human father; and we learn from Swedenborg, that the internal of the mind is in all cases from the father, and the external of it, together with the body, is from the mother. Consequently the internal of the human was not a finite recipient, like the internals of men, but was infinite, or in other words, it was the Father himself. But the external of the human, which was derived from the mother, was finite, imperfect, infirm, and hereditarily prone to evils and falsities.

The effort of the Lord was then to convert this external humanity into a suitable habitation for himself, and a suitable medium through which he might operate for the salvation of men. This is the work which was then to be done. And in doing it, there was no finite and imperfect human soul to operate through, as is the case when he is operating upon men, but he operated immediately upon the

external humanity. And, by operating in this manner, he overcame and cast out all the hereditary propensities to evils and falsities, and implanted in the place of them divine affections for divine goods and truths. And then the divine love of doing and communicating goed unto men was so great and powerful that it overcame and cast off all the finites of the human, and in place of them put on infinites, and that he cast off all inertness and put on life. Thus he glorified his human and made it divine. He made of it an infinite and divine recipient of the fulness of the essential divinity and a divine medium of it unto men.

Now therefore he not only communicates divine gifts unto men, but from his divine humanity he communicates unto them divine states of recipiency. From his divine humanity he is communicating unto us the feelings and thoughts which he had in relation to evils, and he is thus present with us taking away the sins of the world. From his divine humanity he is communicating to us the feelings and thoughts which he had with regard to goods and truths, and is thus present with us, endeavouring to make us will, and think, and do them. The Lord is God with us; he not only communicates unto us divine blessings, but also, by communicating to us his divine recipiency and his divine reaction, he causes us to receive them.

Hence it may be seen that the change, which has been effected in the mode of his existence and operation, consists in this, that he has now done what he was always in the effort to do—that it is a change which the very immutability of his essential attributes required him to make and that it is a change which neither the understanding nor the heart of man need to fear, but may rejoice in.

ON THE DESIGNATION "NEW JERUSALEM CHURCH."

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To the Editors of the Intellectual Repository.

GENTLEMEN,

AN Old Member reluctantly begs your admission of a few more remarks on the above subject.

I feel much obliged to your correspondent, J. C., of Leeds, for the manner in which he has questioned the correctness of the views upon this subject, given by me in the number for May.

I do not know any thing that would be more disagreeable to me, than to be engaged in any controversy, especially with a member of the New Church; but, I hope, I shall feel pleasure in an amicable discussion on any subject, carried on in the language of friendship.

It is with pleasure that I state my approbation of all that J. C. has written on this subject, as to the manner of his statements, except in the use of the word supposititious, as characterizing a case introduced by me. If he uses it in its mild signification of imaginary, I have little reason to complain; but it is often used in a much worse sense, and that would represent me as doing that which I would not do on any account. When he says, page 217, we have a supposititious case, I take it for granted he means, we have an imaginary case, &c. This, I trust, will be sufficient to place us on the most friendly ground, and keep us in the most amicable frame of mind, while we attempt to agree in our sentiments.

Allow me here to state, that many papers in your Magazine, of a controversial character, through the use of many expressions and phrases, indicative of disturbed feelings on the part of the writers, and evidently used for the purpose of exciting uneasiness in the mind of the opponent, I suppose to balance accounts, give, on this account, great pain to many readers. Many papers, in themselves excellent, and well calculated, in other respects, to edify the church, are made worthless, and sometimes injurious, in order to gratify this love of being even with an opponent. I wish I could persuade your correspondents of this class, to make as little account of any display of cleverness, in this respect, as their readers generally do; and content themselves with shewing an error, without, at the same time, attempting to exhibit the writer as an imbecile, and thereby to procure for him the consequent contempt. No writer will allow another to be infallible; and yet he who thus attempts to bring ridicule on a brother, seems to set up a claim for his own infallibility.

I have read and well considered all the remarks of J. C. on my former paper, and fully agree with him as to the distinctness of character, between the New and the former church.

The essentials of all real churches, in their states of integrity, are intrinsically the same, or similar, viz., love to the Lord and love to the neighbour. There can be no true church, nor any real heaven, except in those in whom these loves are predominant, and fill all things of truth, doctrine, judgment, and opinion, as proper to the understanding, and thereby flow into the life, or constitute the soul of the actions of life, on the part of the member of the church, or the angel of heaven.

All dispensations of divine truth have been given, and are still given, to realize these blessed effects in the human mind; and while and as long as they are received in their genuine character, they exist. N. S. No. 31.-VOL. 3.

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in their newness, and are filled with their pristine vigour. While this is the case, the church is a New Church, all things with it are made new; and its newness continues for ever. Time itself, considered in itself, does not and cannot affect it. It is in itself a work of, and belongs to eternity, and cannot be affected by time. This state of the church be considered as denoted in the following passage of the Word: "And I have led you this forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot" (Deut. chap. 24, ver. 5; chap. 8, ver. 4).

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Age and its infirmity as applied to the man of the church, and dilapidation and ruin as applied to a temple, dedicated to the purposes of worship by the members of the church, on which account it represents the church, are the work of perversion. The true church admits of no natural decay, but is daily renewed by the Lord who fills it, and is the essential constituent of every thing, by which it exists in man. In heaven there is a perpetual spring in regard to the significations of the life of angels in vegetable forms, and an increasing newness and variety in all their buildings, which are given them by the Lord, as the outward forms in which they live, in all their correspondences to their inward life. In this way also, I conceive, the right reception of the genuine truth of any divine dispensation, makes its recipient a New Church; and could he also be seen in the manifestations of his internal character, in its correspondences, we should find them as accompaniments to his persevering improvement in holiness, exhibiting a perpetual freshness and vigour.

No doubt, the various past dispensations of divine truth, have been accommodated, in some degree, to the recipients to whom they were first given; and though all were the Word of the Lord, full of infinite wisdom, and were written in heaven as well as upon earth, as the records of eternal instruction for both angels and men, yet to each dispensation we may allow peculiarities, suited to the men to whom they were first given.

The children of Jacob, to whom the Mosaic dispensation was given, were not then capable of becoming a truly spiritual church; and their necessary intercourse with heaven as the church, though only representative of the church, was miraculously effected by their strict observance of the Mosaic ritual, till the fulness of time, when God could be manifested in the flesh for the salvation of the whole human race, and to lay the foundation of a church which should last for ever. The spirituality of the Mosaic dispensation was first proved, appreciated, and enjoyed by the Christian Church; and though not at first

in all that fulness in which it may now, and for ever, be experienced by the member of the New Church signified by the New Jerusalem; yet in such a degree as to make a true Christian Church on earth, from the members of which, the Christian Heaven has been formed, in connexion with which, the New Church on earth shall for ever subsist. All that has been built upon the gospel foundation, by the perversion of the genuine doctrines of Christianity, must be cleared away, and the real superstructure be erected thereon, by the New Jerusalem dispensation.

Nothing therefore can be more distinct than the New Church and the old, perverted, falsely called Christian Church, but not the Christian Church in reality. Had it continued in its genuine character, it would never have been old, or have been marked by dilapidation and deformity.

In a perverted reception of a perverted doctrine of Christianity, there is nothing of genuine Christianity. The temple in it has been thrown down so completely, that one stone has not been left upon another. Any structure that may have been erected according to the perverted vision of its builders, on divine exploration and judgment, will prove to be nothing but a fabrication of merely human invention; and though it may appear as a reality to the deluded, when sought by the light of genuine truth, it will be found to have vanished like the baseless fabric of a vision, and not to have left a wreck behind.

I should, therefore, be very sorry to have it understood by the members of the New Church, that I am the advocate of any amalgamation of the perverted Christianity of the present day, with that of the New Church or of primitive Christianity. Nothing can be more opposite than the truth and the perversion of it, and no other relationship can afterwards subsist between them, than that of opposites.

The same thing more fully developed does not make it, properly speaking, a new or different thing. The Gospel is, and for ever must be, the same. But the doctrines of the New Church, and the influence of the New Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven, enable the humble recipient to see in it millions of realities and beauties, which did not appear till seen in the light of the Lamb that gives light to the holy city. The Gospel contained in it, on its first promulgation, infinite things, as it does now, and will do for ever; but the light of the New Jerusalem alone is sufficient to enable the Christian to see them in their internal reality and glory. It is peculiar to this dispensation that the Lord, who comparatively veiled himself, even to his apostles and first disciples, in a cloud, now removes it, and

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