Purpose of Proverbs Translation

The writings of Swedenborg can be pithy and difficult to read in our age. They were originally written in Latin. What I have done here is reflect on sentences and attempt to boil their meaning down into easily understandable "proverbs".

Friday, February 4, 2011

13 Citations from Divine Providence book by Emanuel Swedenborg simplified into proverbs

There is a correspondential relationship between everything mental and everything physical.  D.P. 181

The Lord arranges the inner forms and workings the way we arrange the outer ones.  D.P. 181

Spiritually-minded people acknowledge God and divine providence, too.  D.P. 182

Strict materialists cannot raise their minds above the material world and see the signs of divine providence in its outward appearances.  D.P. 182

If you think that was is dead can give you life, you are out of your mind.  Life must come from life.  D.P. 182

From our own inherited evil we are constantly hungering for the deepest hell.  D.P. 183

The Lord through divine providence is constantly leading us away from hell and drawing us out of it.  D.P. 183

By heredity, we want to become powerful and rich to the extent that these loves are not held in check.  D.P. 183

Divine providence quietly and gradually takes away this excessive love of wealth and power.  D.P. 183

Divine providence uses various rational, civil, and moral means to lead us away from excessive love of wealth and power.  D.P. 183

The Lord never leads us away from striving for high positions or from gaining wealth, only from an obsession with striving for high position simply for the sake of eminence, or for self-seeking reasons, solely for display or for its own sake.  D.P.  183

Achievement becomes something we seek for service primarily and for ourselves secondarily, and not for ourselves primarily and for service secondarily.  D.P. 183

The Lord always humbles the proud and raises up the humble.  D.P. 183

We have these evils by heredity and more:  fraud, vengeance, blasphemy, etc.  D.P. 184

Many people who became powerful and wealthy in the physical world focused solely on themselves in the next life at first talk ab out God and divine providence as though they sincerely believed in them.  But when the see it clearly and therefore see their eventual lot in hell, they join demons there.  D.P. 185

The Lord uses divine providence to subtly lead us away from our love of pleasure.  D.P. 186

Everyone who accepts inflow from heaven and recognizes divine providence (especially spiritually reformed people) upon seeing events in their amazing kind of sequence, virtually sees providence from a deep recognition and confesses it.  D.P.187

We cannot see divine providence from this world, only from heaven.  D.P. 187

People who have convinced themselves of the supreme value of the physical world and human prudence would not acknowledge providence.  D.P. 187


No comments:

Post a Comment