5450. * Some hideous black horses were seen like dusky clouds. They approached me, and I felt behind me the sphere of adulteration. I wondered what that was. Certain ones at my back were then heard to say: "What need of knowledges, thus, of truths; it is sufficient that one is in holy worship." It was thence perceived that those dusky clouds were from these. They were then told that outward holiness, without knowledges of truth and good, is not holiness, because there is nothing from heaven in it; for it is from an empty man from whom nothing is perceived. They were also told that a man's love, namely, of truth and good, is in all and everyone of the things of [his] worship: hence, if there is nothing [of this] within, what must the quality of the worship or the quality of the holiness be? Those of this description think of self and from self. [It was said], also, that a man is not able to have heaven in him without knowledges: for instance, if he does not know of the Lord, that all good is from Him, and of himself, that all evil [is from him], and that from this knowledge comes the humiliation which belongs to worship. If these [knowledges] are not in the humiliation it has not anything in it, since only the mouth produces it and not the heart. Thus, too, it is in many other instances, namely, that things must be known before they can enter into the formation of the understanding and the will, or the faith and the love. These who were of such a character were monks,** because they keep everybody in the greatest obscurity and darkness: thence it is that papistical darkness arises. Those, namely, who are of such a character, averse to knowledges, by which, all the while, is the way to heaven, and who place the whole of worship in outward things, are the Gog and Magog of the Apocalypse.*** * The numbering leaps, as here, from 5429 to 5450, the Latin Editor tells us, in the author's manuscript. -ED. ** "Monks" -inasmuch as it is Protestantism which is signified by the Dragon - must, it would appear, be here employed as a synonym for the "monkish policy" described. -ED. *** Chap. 20:8. See also Apocalypse Revealed, 858, 859. -ED.