That this is the signification of merchandise, is evident from the signification of merchants, who denote those who procure and sell such things, concerning which see just above (n. 1138) (what the falsities and evils here signified by merchandise are specifically, will be clear from what follows, where they are enumerated) - because this merchandise belongs to Babylon, which is called a harlot and the mother of the whoredoms of the earth, it is meant in the Word by the merchandise of whoredoms; and that these are falsifications and adulterations of good and truth may be seen above (n. 695); and from the signification of not buying any more, which denotes not to receive any more. By not being received is meant, that their falsities and evils are no longer received in the spiritual world. It is different in the natural world; for all those who after death come out of the land of Babel into the spiritual world are explored, and sent according to their loves into societies, the evil into infernal societies; the good are instructed, and according to their reception of truth and good from the Lord, are received into heaven.

[2] Continuation concerning the Athanasian Creed, and concerning the Lord.- The reason why man feels and perceives as if life were in himself, is that the life of the Lord in him is like the light and heat of the sun in a subject. This light and heat do not belong to the subject, but to the sun in it, for they depart with the sun; and when they arc in the subject, they belong in appearance entirely to it, for the colour of the subject is in itself as it were from the light, and its vegetative life from the heat. But this is much more the case with the light and heat from the Sun of the spiritual world, which is the Lord, whose light is the light of life, and whose heat is the heat of life; for the Sun from which they proceed is the Divine Love of the Lord, but man is the recipient subject. This light and heat never recede from man the recipient, and when they are with him, they are, to all appearance, wholly his own; from the light he has the faculty of understanding, and from heat the faculty of willing. From the fact that light and heat although they are not his own are as if wholly in the recipient, that they never recede from him, and that they affect those inmost things that are remote from the sight of his understanding and from the perception of his will, it necessarily appears as if those things are implanted in him, and consequently that their effects are from him. It is for this reason that man has no other idea than that he thinks from himself, and wills from himself, although lie does not do so in the least degree; for thought and will cannot be so united to the recipient as to be his own, precisely as the light and heat of the sun cannot be united to a subject of the earth, and become material like it; the same is true of heat. But the light and heat of life affect and fill the recipient exactly according to the quality of his acknowledgment that they are not his own, but the Lord's; and the quality of acknowledgment is precisely according to the quality of love shown in keeping the commandments, which are uses.