Divine Love and Wisdom (Harleys) n. 395

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395. Since the soul, as to its very being [Esse], is love and wisdom, and these two faculties exist in man from the Lord, two receptacles have been created in man which also are the Lord's dwelling-places with him; one is for love and the other for wisdom; the receptacle for love is called the will, and the receptacle for wisdom is called the understanding. Now since Love and Wisdom in the Lord are one distinctly (see n. 17-22), and Divine Love is of Divine Wisdom, and Divine Wisdom is of Divine Love (n. 34-39), and these go forth in like manner from God-Man, that is, from the Lord, therefore in man these two receptacles and dwelling-places of the Lord, called will and understanding, were so created by the Lord as to be distinctly two, but yet to make one in every operation and in every sensation; for in these the will and the understanding cannot be separated. Still, as essential to the end that man may become a receptacle and dwelling-place, it has been done, as necessary to this end, that man's understanding can be raised above his own particular love into a certain light of wisdom, in the love of which he is not, and thereby may see and learn how one must live to come into that love and so enjoy happiness to eternity. Now since man has misapplied the power of raising the understanding above his own particular love, he has destroyed that within him which might have been the receptacle and dwelling-place of the Lord, that is, of love and wisdom from the Lord, by making the will the dwelling-place of the love of self and of the world, and the understanding the dwelling-place of confirmations of those loves. This is the origin of these two dwelling-places, will and understanding, becoming dwelling-places of infernal love, and, by confirmations in their favour, of infernal thought, which in hell passes for wisdom.


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