2185. They said because they now speak with me, that those things which I have written are so rude and gross that they suppose nothing which is interior can be understood from those words or the mere sense of the words. I also perceived by a spiritual idea that it was so, that my expressions were very rude, wherefore it was given me to reply that my words are only vessels in which purer, better, and interior things can be infused, as if the literal sense [thereof]; that such vessels, as it were, are the many literal senses of the prophets, and that their expressions were not only rude, but even bordered on the mire, dunghill, and the mud, and yet therein were diffused interior, clean, and sacred things; as, for instance, that the Lord is angry, that He is full of wrath, that He kills. These expressions are so roughly framed that it can scarcely be credited that aught of good can be infused therein; when yet the prophets spoke to suit the apprehension of the vulgar, and had they spoken differently, naught that is good could have been infused, because it would not have been understood. So that it was granted to add if they desired to remain in the senses of the letter, then they would have formed their knowledge [scientia] from similar filthy things and vessels, and that such as derive their doctrine [therefrom] must be greatly deceived. - 1748, June 4.