4103. CONCERNING THE POSTERITY OF JACOB AND THE CHURCH. It was insinuated that when at length they became so immersed in falsities, that nothing but the false occupied their minds which happened in the time of Jacob, that then they were vastated, as those are wont to be in the other life who are in the life of the persuasions of the false, so that they knew nothing of true worship, and knowledge was then first insinuated into their mind. This was done from their being in such ignorance and such a confused mental obscurity, that they neither knew moral nor civil law, nor that they were forbidden to commit adultery, to kill, or to steal. They could not be made to know this either by miracles or by prophets, because such was the life of their cupidities derived from Jacob. - 1748, November 30.