1. The Sacred Scripture, or Word, Is Divine Truth Itself

Everyone says that the Word comes from God, is Divinely inspired, and so is holy. But even so, no one has known before this wherein the Divinity in it lies. For in its letter the Word appears as though written in the ordinary way, in a foreign style, neither as sublime or nor as lucid as writings of the present age seem to be.

As a result, a person who worships nature as God, or in preference to God, and so thinks prompted by self and his own self-interest, and not prompted by heaven in response to the Lord, may easily fall into error regarding the Word, and into scorning it, and when reading it, saying to himself, “What is this? What is that? Is this Divine? Can God, whose wisdom is infinite, speak so? Where is the holiness in it, and what makes it holy, other than some teaching of religion and so conviction?”

22. In the process of time, however, the representative forms of the church, which were correspondent forms, were turned into idolatrous ones, and also into magical ones, and of the Lord’s Divine providence a knowledge of correspondences was then gradually obliterated, and in the Israelite and Jewish nation totally lost and extinguished.

The worship of the latter church did indeed consist of nothing but correspondent forms, and so was representative of things having to do with heaven; but still the people did not know what anything symbolized. For they were an entirely natural people, and so were neither willing nor able to know anything of spiritual matters, nor anything therefore of correspondences.