Supplement.

Online works based on the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

Books • Articles • Sermons • Magazines • Sciences • Blogs • Video • Websites • Site

Supplement.

As a Supplement to the foregoing and a Preliminary to childhood preparation for regeneration we add that even at birth the very initial of this preparation has already been taken, by influx of innocence and peace from the LORD through heaven into the infant during the entire period of gestation. The prenatal state qualified by celestial innocence and peace is the essential in every subsequent state and progression. In Arcana Coelestia we read, -

"The internal man with every one is of the LORD alone. There the LORD stores up goods and truths with which He gifts man from infancy. By these He flows into the interior or rational man and by this into the exterior [or natural man], thus it is given to man to think and to be a man."-AC 1707.

In this passage the internal man is the inmost A, the interior or rational man is B, the exterior is C D E F which together are called the natural or external man.

That this inmost is stored with heavenly principles from man's very conception is evident from these considerations:

(1.) The inmost is the primordial degree of man's structure into which the LORD first enters by influx of good and truth as one. From this degree He forms the will and understanding and flows into them when formed. (Inf. 8.)

(2.) The LORD conjoins Himself to man at first conception and forms in him two receptacles to be habitations for Himself in man, one for love the other for wisdom. (D. W. in AE III.)

(3.) Did not the LORD flow into this first degree He could not flow into the degrees below or even form them. Thus from conception this highest degree is filled with the Divine Love and Wisdom from which the LORD operates to form the faculties below and prepare them for the work to be accomplished after birth.

That man at birth is imbued with the beginnings of innocence and peace which are the inmost principles of good and truth of every degree appears from the Writings:

"The LORD through the inmost heaven insinuates conjugial love, the angels there being in peace above others. Peace in the heavens is like spring in the world which gives delight to all things, it is the celestial itself in its origin. The angels who are there, are the wisest of all, and from innocence appear to others like infants; they also love infants far more than their fathers and mothers do. They are present with infants in the womb and by them the LORD takes care that infants are nourished and perfected, thus they preside over those who carry in the womb."-AC 5052

"Love truly conjugial is derived from the love of the LORD toward the Church and from the love of good and truth which love is the love of the angels of the third heaven, wherefore love truly conjugial which thence descends as the love of that heaven, is innocence, which is the very esse of all the good in the heavens; hence embryos in the womb are in a state of peace, and infants after they are born are in a state of innocence. "-AE 985.

"This celestial love flows in out of heaven with mothers while they carry in the womb as also with the embryos, hence exists the love of infants with mothers and innocence with infants."-AE 710[a].

"By the womb is signified inmost conjugial love and thence celestial love in every complex.... The embryo in the womb derives more from the good of innocence than after it is born."-AE 710[a].

These embryo states of innocence and peace being first in order are related to the following states as the seed is related to that which grows from it.