1050. And with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. That this signifies violence offered to those truths of the Word that teach that the Lord alone is to be worshipped, is evident from the signification of blood, as denoting the Divine truth of the Word, and the violence offered to it, as said just above; and from the signification of the witnesses of Jesus, as denoting those who in heart acknowledge the Lord, and worship and adore Him alone. That to bear witness is to acknowledge in heart, and that the testimony of Jesus is the acknowledgment of the Lord's Divine in His Human, and that He alone is to be worshipped and adored, may be seen (n. 10, 27, 228, 392, 635, 649, 749). That violence is offered by the Babylonians to the truths of the Word that teach concerning the Lord is quite clear from this, that they have transferred the Lord's Divine power to the Pope, as His vicar, and, together with it, worship and adoration; and that for this end they have separated the Lord's Divine from His Human, in order that they might say that they have not taken His Divine, but His human power, not desiring to know that the Divine power consists principally in the power of saving the human race; this power the Babylonians, nevertheless, appropriate to themselves. But upon this subject more will be said elsewhere.
Continuation concerning Profanation:-
[2] The reason for such a horrible state of profanation after death shall also be disclosed. Man has two minds, a natural and a spiritual. The natural mind is opened to him by the knowledges and cognitions of truth and good; and the spiritual mind is opened by a life according to them. And this takes place with those who know, acknowledge, and believe the truths of the Word, and live according to them. The spiritual mind is opened with no others. When this mind is opened, then the light of heaven, which is Divine truth, flows in thereby into the natural mind, and there disposes truths according to correspondences. When, therefore, a man departs into a contrary state, and either in faith or life denies the truths of the Word, which before he had acknowledged, then the things in the natural mind no longer correspond with those in the spiritual mind; consequently, heaven from its light flows in through the spiritual mind into things that do not correspond, and into things that are the opposites of it, in the natural man. From this a phantasy exists so direful that they seem to themselves to fly in the air like dragons, while flakes of snow and chaff appear to them to be giants and crowds, and a little ball as if it were the whole globe, and many similar things.
The reason, therefore, is that they have heaven in the spiritual mind, and hell in the natural mind. And when heaven, in the Spiritual mind, acts into hell, in the natural mind, then such things appear. Because the understanding is hereby destroyed as to everything pertaining to it, and with the understanding the will also, the man is no longer a man. This is why a profane person is no longer called "a man," nor "he" or "she," but "it," for it is a brute.
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