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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 #802

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802. We say that from the Roman Catholic religion, meant by the city of Babylon, comes the adulteration and profanation of all the truth of the Word and so of every sanctity of the church; and a number of times previously we have said that that religion has not only adulterated the Word's goods and truths, but has also profaned them; and that Babylon in the Word therefore symbolizes the profanation of what is holy. We will now say how that profanation came about and continues.

We said above that the love of exercising dominion, springing from a love of self, over the sanctities of the church and over heaven, thus over all the Divine sanctities belonging to the Lord, is the Devil. 1 Now because that dominion was fixed as the objective in the hearts of those who founded the Roman Catholic religion, they could not help but profane the sanctities of the Word and the church.

Suppose that that love, which is the Devil, is inwardly fixed in someone's mind, as is the case with every reigning love, and place some Divine truth outwardly before his eyes. Would he not tear it up, throw it on the ground, and trample it, and in its place summon up some falsity agreeable to him?

[2] A love of possessing all the goods of the world is Satan, and the Devil and Satan act in concert, as though bound together by covenant, in the kind of people who, owing to the one love, are caught up in the other.

One may conclude from this why it is that Babylon in the Word symbolizes profanation.

By way of illustration, place before that love, which is the Devil, this Divine truth, that God alone is to be worshiped and adored, and not some man, thus that the Vicariate is a fabrication and a fiction which ought to be rejected. Or else this truth, that to call upon the dead, to fall prostrate before their images, to kiss them and their bones, is a pure and foul idolatry that ought also to be rejected. Would not that love, which is the Devil, vehemently and angrily reject these two truths, fulminate against them, and tear them to pieces?

[3] If, moreover, someone were to say to that love, which is the Devil, that to open and close heaven or loose and bind, thus to forgive sins - which is the same thing as reforming and regenerating and thus redeeming and saving mankind - is a work purely Divine; that a person cannot claim for himself something Divine without committing profanation; that Peter did not claim it for himself, and therefore did not exercise any such power; moreover that the apostolic succession was fabricated by that love, as was also the transference of the Holy Spirit from one person to another - on hearing these things, would not that love, which is the Devil, deafen with anathemas the person saying them, and in a fiery rage command that he be turned over to an inquisitor and thrown into a prison of the condemned?

If someone still were to ask, "How can the Lord's Divine power be transferred to you? How can the Lord's Divinity be separated from His soul and body? Is it not according to your belief that this cannot be done? How can God the Father impart His Divine power to the Son except to His own Divinity as its receptacle? How can this be transferred to a person so as to be his?" And many other like things.

Hearing them, would not that love, which is the Devil, fall silent, rage within, gnash its teeth, and cry, "Take this person away! Crucify him, crucify him! Everyone go, go! See the great heretic and amuse yourselves!"

Footnotes:

1. nos. 796:2, 797:1.

  
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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.

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