1. THE CORONIS OR APPENDIX ¹ TO THE TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

THESE three subjects — the Consummation of the Age, the Coming of the Lord, and the New Church — have, it is true, been treated of in the last chapter of the work entitled THE TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. The reason why a Continuation follows about them, is, because no one at this day knows what the Consummation of the Age is, why a Second Advent of the Lord must take place, or that a New Church is about to come; and yet these three subjects are treated of in both the Prophetic and the Apostolic Word, and fully in the Apocalypse. That those three subjects are treated of in the Prophetic Word of the Old Testament, was made evident to me while it was given me to lay it open by means of the spiritual sense; and in like manner that they are treated of in the Prophetic book of the New Testament, which is called the Apocalypse: that they are also in the Evangelic and Apostolic Word, will be plain from the following pages. Hence it follows, that, without some knowledge respecting the Consummation of the Age, the Second Advent of the Lord, and the New Church, the Word is as it were shut up; nor can anything but knowledges open it: these are like keys which open the door and let one in. When this takes place with the Word, then the treasures which lay concealed therein as at the bottom of the sea, come into view; for, at the bottom, there are in the Word nothing else but treasures. In this Appendix, or Continuation, I shall proceed, in like manner as in the work itself, by prefixed Summaries, which will be confirmed from Scripture and illustrated from reason.

Footnotes:

15. (viii) THE CHURCH CANNOT HOLD TOGETHER AT ALL IN THE CASE OF A PERSON WHO ACKNOWLEDGES NOT ONE GOD, BUT SEVERAL.

The man who acknowledges in his belief one God and worships Him in his heart is in the communion of saints on earth, and of angels in the heavens. These are called communions, and they really are, because they are in the one God, and the one God is in them. The same people are also linked with the whole of the heaven of angels, and, I dare assert, with each and every one there. For they are all like sons and descendants of a single father, whose minds, manners and faces are similar, so that they can recognise one another. The heaven of angels is organised into communities in accordance with the varieties of the love for good, but all these varieties aim at a single most general love, that is, love to God. From this love are descended all who acknowledge in their belief, and worship in their heart, one God the Creator of the universe, and at the same time the Redeemer and the Regenerator.

[2] But far different is the case of those who approach and adore not one God, but several; or if it happens that they worship one God with their lips but three in their thinking, as those do in the church today who divide God into three persons, and declare each person by himself to be God, and attribute to each person different qualities or peculiarities not shared with another. This produces an actual division not only in the oneness of God, but also in their theology, and likewise human minds that are devoted to it. What can be the result but a tangle of incoherent ideas about church matters? It will be proved in an Appendix to this book that this is the state of the church today. The truth is that to divide God or the Divine Essence into three persons, each of which severally or by itself is God, is tantamount to denying God. It is as if someone goes into a church to worship, and sees represented in a painting over the altar one God as the Ancient of Days, another as High Priest, and a third flying like Aeolus, and a label underneath saying 'These three are one God.' Or perhaps it is as if he were to see the Oneness and the Trinity represented as a man with three heads on one body or with three bodies topped by a single head; that is a monstrous idea, and if anyone were to enter heaven with that in his mind, he would certainly be flung out head first, even if he said that the head or heads stand for the essence, and the body or bodies separate properties.