Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom | Page 5

apart from its soul. The Divine soul of God-Man is what is meant by
Divine Esse, and the Divine Body is what is meant by Divine Existere.
That a soul can exist apart from a body, and can think and be wise, is
an error springing from fallacies; for every man's soul is in a spiritual
body after it has cast off the material coverings which it carried about
in the world. * To be and to exist. Swedenborg seems to use this word
"exist" nearly in the classical sense of springing or standing forth,

becoming manifest, taking form. The distinction between esse and
existere is essentially the same as between substance and form. ** For
the meaning of this phrase. "distincte unum," see below in this
paragraph, also n. 17, 22, 34, 223, and DP 4. *** It should be noticed
that in Latin, distinctly is the adverb of the verb distinguish. If
translated distinguishably, this would appear.
15. Esse is not Esse unless it Exists, because until then it is not in a
form, and if not in a form it has no quality; and what has no quality is
not anything. That which Exists from Esse, for the reason that it is from
Esse, makes one with it. From this there is a uniting of the two into one;
and from this each is the others mutually and interchangeably, and each
is all in all things of the other as in itself.
16. From this it can be seen that God is a Man, and consequently He is
God-Existing; not existing from Himself but in Himself. He who has
existence in Himself is God from whom all things are.
17. IN GOD-MAN INFINITE THINGS ARE ONE DISTINCTLY.
That God is infinite is well known, for He is called the Infinite; and He
is called the Infinite because He is infinite. He is infinite not from this
alone, that He is very Esse and Existere in itself, but because in Him
there are infinite things. An infinite without infinite things in it, is
infinite in name only. The infinite things in Him cannot be called
infinitely many, nor infinitely all, because of the natural idea of many
and of all; for the natural idea of infinitely many is limited, and the
natural idea of infinitely all, though not limited, is derived from limited
things in the universe. Therefore man, because his ideas are natural, is
unable by any refinement or approximation, to come into a perception
of the infinite things in God; and an angel, while he is able, because he
is in spiritual ideas, to rise by refinement and approximation above the
degree of man, is still unable to attain to that perception.
18. That in God there are infinite things, any one may convince himself
who believes that God is a Man; for, being a Man, He has a body and
every thing pertaining to it, that is, a face, breast, abdomen, loins and
feet; for without these He would not be a Man. And having these, He

also has eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and tongue; also the parts within man,
as the heart and lungs, and their dependencies, all of which, taken
together, make man to be a man. In a created man these parts are many,
and regarded in their details of structure are numberless; but in
God-Man they are infinite, nothing whatever is lacking, and from this
He has infinite perfection. This comparison holds between the
uncreated Man who is God and created man, because God is a Man;
and He Himself says that the man of this world was created after His
image and into His likeness (Gen. 1:26, 27).
19. That in God there are infinite things, is still more evident to the
angels from the heavens in which they dwell. The whole heaven,
consisting of myriads of myriads of angels, in its universal form is like
a man. So is each society of heaven, be it larger or smaller. From this,
too, an angel is a man, for an angel is a heaven in least form. (This is
shown in the work Heaven and Hell, n. 51-86.) Heaven as a whole, in
part, and in the individual, is in that form by virtue of the Divine which
angels receive; for in the measure in which an angel receives from the
Divine is he in complete form a man. From this it is that angels are said
to be in God, and God in them; also, that God is their all. How many
things there are in heaven cannot be told; and because the Divine is
what makes heaven, and consequently these unspeakably many things
are from the Divine, it is clearly evident that there are infinite things in
Very Man, who is