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Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings

This list of Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings was originally compiled by W. C. Henderson in 1960 but has since been updated.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #417

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417. To this I will append the following account:

I saw in the spiritual world two flocks, one a flock of goats, and the other a flock of sheep. I wondered who they were, since I knew that animals seen in the spiritual world are not really animals, but are correspondent forms of the affections and consequent thoughts of the local inhabitants. Therefore I drew nearer, and as I approached, the likenesses of animals disappeared, and instead of them I saw people. It also became clear that those who formed the flock of goats were people who had confirmed themselves in the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and that those who formed the flock of sheep were people who believed that charity and faith are inseparable, as goodness and truth are inseparable.

[2] I then spoke with those who had looked like goats, and I said, "Why are you gathered together like this?"

They were mostly clergy, who vaunted themselves on account of their reputation for learning, because they knew the arcana of justification by faith alone. They said they had assembled to convene a council, because they had heard that the saying of Paul in Romans 3:28, that "a person is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law," was not rightly understood, since by deeds of the law Paul meant the deeds prescribed by Mosaic law, which existed for Jews.

"We see this clearly," they said, "also from Paul's words to Peter, whom he rebuked for Judaizing, even though Peter knew that no one is justified by the works of the law (Galatians 2:14-16). Moreover, Paul distinguishes between the law of faith and the law of works, 1 and between Jews and gentiles, 2 or between circumcision and uncircumcision; 3 and by circumcision he means Judaism, as he does everywhere else. He also then concludes with these words: 'Do we then abolish the law by faith? Not at all. Rather we establish the law.' He says all of this in one series of verses, in Romans 3:27-31.

"In addition, he says as well in the preceding chapter, 'not the hearers of the law will be justified in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified' (Romans 2:13). Furthermore, that God will render to each one according to his deeds (Romans 2:6). And still further, 'We must all appear before the judgment seat of the Christ, that each one may give an account of the things done in the body..., whether good or evil' (2 Corinthians 5:10). Not to mention many other statements in Paul's writing, which make it apparent that Paul rejected faith apart from good works, just as much as James (James 2:17-26).

[3] "That Paul meant the deeds prescribed by Mosaic law, which existed for Jews - this we have further confirmed from the fact that all the statutes for the Jews in the books of Moses are called the Law, being thus works prescribed by the Law, which we see to be so from the following statements:

This is the law of the grain offering. (Leviticus 6:14ff.)

This is the law of the trespass offering... (Leviticus 7:1, 7)

This is the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings... (Leviticus 7:11ff.)

This is the law of the burnt offering, the grain offering, the sin offering and trespass offering, the consecrations, and the sacrifice of the peace offerings... (Leviticus 7:37)

This is the law regarding animals and birds... (Leviticus 11:46f.)

This is the law regarding her who gives birth, to a son or a daughter. (Leviticus 12:7)

This is the law regarding a leprous plague... (Leviticus 13:59, cf. 14:2, 14:32, 14:54, 14:57)

This is the law regarding one suffering a discharge of fluid... (Leviticus 15:32)

This is the law regarding jealousness... (Numbers 5:29-30)

This is the law for the Nazirite... (Numbers 6:13, 21)

This is the law (regarding cleanness). (Numbers 19:14)

This is... the law (regarding the red heifer). (Numbers 19:2)

(The law for a king.) (Deuteronomy 17:15-19)

"In fact," the speakers said, "the whole five books of Moses are called the Book of the Law, in Deuteronomy 31:9, 11-12, 26, and elsewhere."

To this they added also that they saw in Paul that the law in the Ten Commandments ought to be lived, and that it is fulfilled by charity, which is love for the neighbor (Romans 13:8-10), thus not by faith alone.

They said that this was why they had come together.

[4] In order not to disturb them, however, I withdrew, and at a distance then they looked again like goats, sometimes like ones lying down, and sometimes like ones standing, but turned away from the flock of sheep. They looked like goats lying down when they were deliberating, and like ones standing when they drew conclusions.

But I kept my eyes on their horns, and I was surprised to see that the horns on their foreheads appeared sometimes as though extending forward and upward, and sometimes curving back to the rear, and finally to be completely turned backward. At that they suddenly all turned then to face the flock of sheep, though they looked like goats.

I went over to them again, therefore, and asked what was happening now. They said they had concluded that faith alone produces the goods of charity called good works, as a tree produces fruit.

But then we heard a clap of thunder and saw a flash of lightning from above; and presently an angel appeared, standing between the two flocks, who cried out to the flock of sheep, "Do not listen to them! They have not abandoned their earlier faith, which teaches that God the Father took pity for the sake of the Son. That faith is not faith in the Lord. Nor is faith a tree. Rather a person is a tree. Only repent and turn to the Lord, and you will have faith. Before then faith is not faith having any life in it."

The goats with their horns turned backward then tried to approach the sheep, but the angel standing between them divided the sheep into two groups and said to those on the left, "Attach yourselves to the goats. But I tell you that a wolf is going to come that will carry them off, and you with them."

[5] However, after the two groups of sheep had been separated, and those on the left heard the angel's warning, they looked at each other and said, "Let's confer with our former comrades."

So then the group on the left addressed the one on the right, saying, "Why did you leave your pastors? Are not faith and charity inseparable, as a tree and its fruit are inseparable? For a tree continues on through the branch into the fruit. Take away anything from the branch that flows by an unbroken connection into the fruit, and will not the fruit perish? Ask our priests if that is not the case."

So then they asked, and the priests looked around at the rest, who winked to tell them to speak well. And after that they replied that such was the case. "Faith is preserved by its fruits," they said. But they would not say that faith is contained in the fruits.

[6] At that one of the priests among the sheep on the right rose and said, "They replied to you that such is the case, but still they tell their own flock that it is not the case, as they think otherwise."

The group on the right asked, therefore, how those priests think then. "Do they not teach as they think?"

"No," the priest replied. "They think that every good of charity that is called a good work, that a person does for his salvation or for the sake of eternal life, is not good but evil, because by the work the person is trying of himself to save himself, claiming for himself the righteousness and merit of Him who is the only Savior. And this is the case, they think, with every good work in which a person is conscious of his own will. Consequently among themselves they call good works done by a person of himself not blessings but curses, saying that they merit hell rather than heaven."

[7] However, those of the group on the left said, "You are telling lies about them. Do they not clearly in our presence preach charity and its works, which they call works of faith?"

But the priest replied, "You do not understand their preaching. Only a clergyman who is present pays attention and understands. They think only of moral charity and its civic and political goods, which they call goods of faith, but which are absolutely not. For an atheist can do the same things in the same way and give them the same appearance. Therefore they unanimously say that no one is saved by any works, but by faith alone.

"But let us illustrate this with analogies. They say that an apple tree produces apples; however, if a person does good deeds for his salvation, as the tree does apples by an unbroken connection, then the apples are rotten inside and full of worms. They say, too, that a grapevine produces grapes; but if a person were to produce spiritual goods as a grapevine does grapes, he would produce wild grapes."

[8] At that those of the group on the left asked in response, "What then is the nature of their goods of charity or good works, which are the fruits of faith?"

The priest replied that they are unseen, being within a person from the Holy Spirit, of which the person is totally unaware.

Responding, they said, "If a person is totally unaware of them, there must at least be some connection. Otherwise how can they be called works of faith? Perhaps those unfelt goods are then insinuated into the person's volitional works by some mediating influx, as by some affecting, influencing, inspiring, prodding or spurring of the will, by a silent perception in the thought and a resulting admonition, contrition, and thus conscience, and so by an impulse, an obedience to the Ten Commandments and the Word, either as a little child or as a wise adult, or by some other means like these."

But the priest replied, "No, they are not. Even if their proponents say that it comes about by such means because good works come about by faith, still they sew these up in their sermons with words whose result is to deny that they originate from faith. Some of them still teach such means, but as signs of faith, and not as its bonds with charity."

Some of those on the left nevertheless conceived of a connection by means of the Word, and they said, "Is there not thus a connection, that a person acts voluntarily in accord with the Word?"

But the priest replied, "That's not what they think. Rather they think it is formed simply by hearing the Word, thus not by understanding the Word, lest something enter perceptibly through the intellect into a person's thought and will. For they assert that everything in a person's volitional makeup is merit-seeking, and that in spiritual matters a person cannot undertake, will, think, understand, believe, do or cooperate in anything any more than a log.

"Still, however, the case is different with the influx of the Holy Spirit through faith into the discourses of preachers, because these are actions of the mouth and not actions of the body, and because by faith a person acts with God, but by charity with men."

[9] But when one of those on the left heard that a connection is formed simply by hearing the Word and not by understanding the Word, he said irately, "Is it then by an understanding of the Word gained from the Holy Spirit only, when a person in church turns away or sits as deaf as a post, or when he sleeps, or gained simply from some exhalation from the Word, the book? What could be more absurd?"

After that a man from the group on the right, who excelled the rest in judgment, asked to be heard, and speaking said, "I heard someone say, 'I have planted a vineyard. Now I will drink wine till I am drunk.' But someone else said, 'Will you drink wine from your glass with your right hand?' And the first one said, 'No. I will drink it from an unseen glass with an unseen hand.' So the second one said, 'Then you surely won't get drunk!'"

Then the same man said, "Only listen to me, please. I say to you, drink wine from the Word understood. Do you not know that the Lord embodies the Word? Does the Word not come from the Lord? Is He not therefore present in it? If then you do good in obedience to the Word, do you not do it from the Lord, in obedience to His utterance and will? And if you then look to the Lord, He Himself also will lead you and do the good, and do it through you, so that you do it as though of yourself. Who can say, if he does something for a king, in obedience to his utterance and will, 'I do this of myself, in compliance with my own utterance or command, by my own will?'"

Following that the priest turned to the clergy and said, "Ministers of God, do not lead the flock astray!"

[10] Hearing this, a large majority of the group on the left went back and joined the group on the right. Some of the clergy also then said, "We have heard something we have not heard before. We are pastors. We will not abandon the sheep." And they went back with them and said, "That man spoke a true word. Who can say, if he acts in obedience to the Word, thus from the Lord, in obedience to His utterance and will, 'I do this of myself'? Who says, if he does something for a king, in obedience to his utterance and will, 'I am doing this of myself'?

"We see now the Divine providence in why the conjunction of faith and works acknowledged by the ecclesiastical body has not been found. It could not be found, because it cannot be imparted; for that faith is not faith in the Lord who embodies the Word, and so is not a faith derived from the Word."

But the rest of the priests went away, and waving their caps they cried, "Faith alone, faith alone! It will yet survive!"

Footnotes:

1. Romans 3:27.

2. Romans 3:29; 9:24.

3. Romans 2:25-27; 3:30; 4:9, 10

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christian Religion #462

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462. The fourth experience 1

In the spiritual world I looked towards the sea-coast and saw a splendid port. On approaching I looked inside and there lay boats both great and small, containing cargoes of every kind; and on their thwarts sat boys and girls who distributed the goods to any that wished. 'We are waiting,' they said, 'for our lovely turtles to appear. They will come out of the sea to us at any moment.'

Then I saw turtles, both small and great, on whose shells and scales sat baby turtles, all looking towards the surrounding islands. The father turtles had two heads, a large one covered with shell like that of their bodies, which gave them a ruddy look; the other a small one of the sort turtles have, which they could draw back into the forepart of their bodies, and could make invisible by inserting it into the larger head. But I kept my gaze on the large, ruddy head, and made out that it had a face like a human being, and was talking with the boys and girls on the thwarts and was licking their hands. The boys and girls fondled them and gave them tit-bits and delicacies, as well as valuable goods such as silk for clothes, citron-wood for tables, purple for ornament and scarlet for dyeing.

[2] On seeing these I wanted to know what they represented, because I know that all sights seen in the spiritual world are correspondences, representing the spiritual effects of affection and the thought it produces. Then I was spoken to from heaven and told: 'You know yourself what the port and the ships represent, as well as the boys and girls on the thwarts; but you do not know what the turtles are. They represent,' they said, 'those of the clergy there who totally separate faith from charity and its good deeds, insisting to themselves that there is obviously no possibility of linking them, but the Holy Spirit by means of faith in God the Father for the sake of the Son's merit enters into a person and purifies him inwardly even as far as his own will, which they imagine as a sort of oval plane. When the working of the Holy Spirit approaches this plane, it twists aside around its left edge without touching it at all, so that the interior or upper part of the person's character is for God, and the exterior or lower part is for man. Thus nothing the person does appears in God's sight, neither good nor bad; the good does not, because this would be to acquire merit, and the bad does not because it is bad. Either of these, if it were presented to God's sight, would destroy the person, Since this is so, a person may will, think, speak and do whatever he pleases, so long as he takes precautions from a worldly point of view,'

[3] I asked whether they also held that one might think of God as not being omnipresent and omniscient. I was told from heaven that this too is allowed them, because in the case of one who has acquired faith and been purified and justified by it, God pays no attention to any thought or will on his part, but he still retains in the inward recess or higher region of his mind or character the faith which he had received by its activity, and that this activity may from time to time recur without the person's knowledge. 'These facts are represented by the small head which they draw back into the forepart of their bodies and also insert into the larger head when talking to laymen. For in speaking to them they do not use the small head, but the large one, the front of which has a kind of human face. Their talk with them is based on the Word, about love, charity, good deeds, the Ten Commandments, repentance; and they quote from the Word almost everything which is said there on these subjects. But then they insert the small head into the large one, which allows them inwardly to understand that these things are not to be done for God's sake or for salvation, but only for the sake of public or private advantage.

[4] 'But because they base their remarks on these subjects on the Word, especially in speaking with great charm and elegance of the Gospel, the working of the Holy Spirit and salvation, they seem to their hearers like handsome men endowed with wisdom beyond all others on the globe. This was why you saw them being given delicacies and valuable goods by the boys and girls sitting on the thwarts in the boats. So these are the people you saw represented as turtles. In your world they are hard to tell apart from others, except for the fact that they think they excel all others in wisdom, laughing at others, including those who hold similar views on faith, but are not privy to their secrets. They carry a seal with them in their clothing, by which they can make themselves known to others of their sort.'

[5] The person talking with me said: 'I shall not tell you their opinions on other matters to do with faith, such as the elect, free will, baptism and the Holy Supper. These are opinions that they do not divulge, though we in heaven know them. However, since this is the sort of people they are in the world, and after death no one is allowed to speak otherwise than he thinks, they are considered insane, because they are then unable to speak except for the mad ideas that fill their thoughts. So they are ejected from their communities, eventually being cast down into the pit of the abyss (mentioned in Revelation 9:2), becoming bodily spirits and looking like Egyptian mummies. A hard skin is drawn over the interiors of their minds, because in the world too they had set up a barrier there. The community they form in hell is adjacent to the one there composed of Machiavellians; they constantly visit one another and call themselves companions. But they leave them on account of their difference, in that they have some religious feeling about the act of justification by faith, while the Machiavellians have none.'

[6] After seeing them expelled from their communities and brought together ready to be cast down, I saw in the air a ship sailing under seven sails, and in it ships' officers and seamen dressed in purple with magnificent laurels on their hats. 'Here we are in heaven,' they shouted, 'we are purple-clad doctors, adorned with finer laurels than anyone else, because we are the leading wise men of all the clergy in Europe.' I wondered what this was, and I was told that they were pictures of pride and imaginary thoughts, known as fantasies, arising from those who previously appeared as turtles; now being cast out of their communities as insane, they were gathered into one group and were now standing in one place.

Then wishing to talk with them I approached the place where they were standing and greeted them. 'Are you,' I said, 'the people who separated people's internals from their externals, and the working of the Holy Spirit as in faith from the Spirit's co-operation with man outside of faith, thus separating God from man? Did you not by this take away not only charity itself and its deeds from faith, as many other doctors of the clergy do, but also faith itself in so far as it is displayed by man in the sight of God?

[7] But would you prefer me to talk to you on this subject by the light of reason, or by drawing upon Holy Scripture?' 'Speak first,' they said, 'by the light of reason.'

So I spoke and said: 'How can a person's internal and external be separated? Can anyone endowed with normal powers of perception fail to see, or fail to be capable of seeing, that all of a person's interiors extend into and are continued into his exteriors, reaching even to his outermost level so as to bring about their effects and perform what they want to do? Surely the internals exist for the sake of the externals, so that these may be where they end, and they may rest on them, so coming into being, very much as a column stands on its base. You can see that, if they were discontinuous and so not joined, the outermost layers would collapse and burst like a bubble in the air. Can anyone deny that the inward workings of God in a person number billions, all unknown to the person concerned; and what profit is it to know about them, so long as the outermost layers are known, the point at which he is in his thought and will together with God?

[8] 'Let us take an example to illustrate this. Surely no one is aware of the inward workings of his speech: how the lungs draw in air, which fills the vesicles, bronchi and lobes; how he expels the air into the trachea and there turns it into sound; how the sound is modified in the glottis by the help of the larynx, and how the tongue then articulates it, the lips completing the articulation, so that speech is produced. All those inward workings, of which the person is totally unaware, are for the sake of the end product, the person's ability to speak. Take away or separate one of those internal processes so that it is no longer continuous with the end product, and a person could no more talk than a block of wood.

[9] 'Let us take another example. The two hands form the extremities of the human body. But the internal parts which form a continuous link with them run from the head through the neck, then the chest, shoulder-blades, arms and elbows; and there are countless muscular tissues, countless rows of motor fibres, countless bundles of nerves and blood-vessels, and many joints of bones with their ligaments and membranes - is anyone aware of any of this? Yet it takes every single one of them to make the hands function. Suppose the internal parts twisted back to the left or the right around the wrist-joint and did not continue into the hands; would not the hand then fall away from the elbow and rot away like any lifeless part torn off? Or if you prefer the idea, it would be like what happens to the body when a person is beheaded. This is exactly what would happen to the human mind, together with its two kinds of life, the will and the understanding, if the Divine workings which have to do with faith and charity stopped mid-way, and did not extend without a break to man. To be sure, man then would be not merely an animal, but a rotten block of wood. Such conclusions are the product of reason.

[10] 'Now if you are willing to listen, the same things are in accordance with Holy Scripture. Does not the Lord say:

Remain in me and I in you. I am the vine and you are the branches. If someone remains in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, John 15:4-5.

Surely the fruits are the good deeds which the Lord does by means of man, and man does of himself under the Lord's guidance. The Lord also says that He stands at the door and knocks, and He goes in to anyone who opens the door, and dines with him and he with the Lord (Revelation 3:20). Does not the Lord give minas and talents for man to trade with and make a profit, and does He not give everlasting life in accordance with his profit (Matthew 25:14-30; Luke 19:13-26)? Or again, does He not give each man his pay in proportion to the work he does in the Lord's vineyard (Matthew 20:1-17)? These are but a few examples; pages could be filled with quotations from the Word showing that man should produce fruit like a tree, should act according to the commandments, love God and the neighbour, and much more besides.

[11] 'But I know that your own intelligence cannot have anything in common, regarded as it is essentially, with these teachings from the Word. Although you talk about them, your ideas pervert them. Nor can you help yourselves, because you take away from man everything that is God's as regards communication and the linking it produces. What is then left, but merely everything that has to do with public worship?'

Later on these people appeared to me in the light of heaven, which uncovers and makes visible what sort of person each one is. Then they did not appear as before in a ship sailing through the air as if in heaven, nor did the people in it have purple clothing and laurels around their heads. But they were in a sandy place, clothed in rags, with nets like fishermen's round their lower parts, through which their nakedness was visible. Then they were sent down to join a community which was adjacent to that of the Machiavellians.

Footnotes:

1. Repeated from Apocalypse Revealed 463.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

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