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Arcana Coelestia 1838. .. for the Lord appears according to the state of each person… take as an example, vastation, punishment, and condemnation, which are attributed to the Lord in many passages of the Word; when nevertheless they belong to the man of the church, who vastates, punishes, and condemns himself. It appears before man as if the Lord vastated, punished, and condemned; and because it appears so, it is so expressed according to the appearances; for if man were not instructed by appearances, he would not suffer himself to be instructed at all. What is contrary to the appearance he does not believe or comprehend, except at a later period, when he possesses judgment and has been gifted with the faith of charity.
Doctrine of Sacred Scripture 38…The celestial, the spiritual, and the natural proceed from the Lord in successive order, and in the ultimate are in simultaneous order; and it is in this way that the celestial and spiritual senses of the Word are simultaneous in its natural sense. When this is comprehended, it may be seen how the natural sense of the Word, which is the sense of the letter, is the basis, containant, and support of its spiritual and celestial senses; and how in the sense of the letter of the Word Divine good and Divine truth are in their fullness, in their holiness, and in their power.
DSS 39…the sense of the letter the Word is the very Word itself, for within this sense there are spirit and life, the spiritual sense being its spirit, and the celestial sense its life.
DSS 40. The truths of the sense of the letter of the Word are in part not naked truths, but appearances of truth, and are as it were likenesses and comparisons taken from things such as exist in nature, and thus accommodated and adapted to the apprehension of the simple and of little children. But being correspondences they are receptacles and abodes of genuine truth; and are like enclosing and containing vessels, as a crystal cup encloses noble wine, and as a silver plate holds palatable food. They are also like garments which clothe, as swathings do an infant, and a pretty dress a maiden. They are also like the memory-knowledges [scientifica] of the natural man which contain within them perceptions and affections of truth of the spiritual man. The naked truths themselves which are enclosed, held, clothed, and contained, are in the spiritual sense of the Word; and the naked goods are in its celestial sense.
DSS 41. Such being the Word in the sense of the letter, it follows that they who are in Divine truths, and in the faith that the Word within, in its bosom, is Divine holiness – and much more they who are in the faith that it is from its spiritual and celestial senses that the Word is Divine holiness – see Divine truths in natural light while reading the Word in enlightenment from the Lord. For the light of heaven (in which is the spiritual sense of the Word) flows into the natural light in which is its sense of the letter, and illumines man’s intellectual called the rational, and causes him to see and recognize Divine truths, both where they stand in plain view, and where they lie concealed. With some these Divine truths flow in along with the light of heaven; sometimes even when they are not aware of it.
