True Christian Religion (Ager) n. 33

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33. (6) Every created thing is finite; and the Infinite is in finite things as in its receptacles, and is in men as in its images. Every created thing is finite because all things are from Jehovah God through the sun of the spiritual world, which most nearly encompasses Him; and that sun is composed of the substance that has gone forth from Him, the essence of which is love. From the sun, by means of its heat and light, the universe has been created from its firsts to its lasts. But this is not the proper place to set forth in order the process of creation, an outline of which will be given in subsequent pages. All that is important now is to know that one thing was formed from another, and thus degrees were constituted, three in the spiritual world and three corresponding to them in the natural world, and the same number in the passive materials of which the terraqueous globe is composed. The origin and nature of these degrees has been fully explained in the Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom (published at Amsterdam in 1763), and a small work on The Interaction of the Soul and the Body (published at London in 1769). Through these degrees all things posterior are made receptacles of things prior, and these again of things still prior, and so in succession receptacles of the primitive elements which constitute the sun of the angelic heaven; and thus have things finite been made receptacles of the infinite. This is in agreement with the wisdom of the ancients, according to which each thing and all things are divisible to infinity. It is a common idea that, because the finite cannot grasp the infinite, things finite cannot be receptacles of the infinite; but in what has been set forth in my works respecting creation it has been shown that God first rendered His infinity finite by means of substances emitted from Himself, from which His nearest surrounding sphere, which constitutes the sun of the spiritual world, came into existence; and that then through that sun He perfected the other surrounding spheres, even to the outmost, which consists of passive materials; and in this manner, by means of degrees, He rendered the world more and more finite. This much has been said to satisfy human reason, which never rests until it perceives a cause.


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