Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 10785

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10785. When the angelic spirits who were from that earth came into view, they accosted us, asking who we were, and what we desired. We said that we were travelers, and that we had been conveyed thither, and that they need not be afraid of us. For they were afraid that we were of those who disturb them about God, about faith, and about other like things, on account of whom they had betaken themselves into that quarter of their earth, avoiding them wherever they could. They were asked by what those persons disturb them. They replied, "By the idea of Three, and by the idea of a Divinity in God without any Humanity, when yet they know and perceive that God is one, and that He is a Man. It was then perceived that those who disturbed them, and whom they fled from, were from our earth. This was perceived also from the fact that those in the other life who wander about in this way from an eagerness and delight in traveling which they contracted in the world, are from our earth; for on other earths there are no such travelings about. It was afterward found that their visitors were monks who had traveled about on our globe from a zeal for converting the Gentiles; and therefore we said that they do well to avoid them, because their intention is not to teach, but to get rich, and to rule; and that they first take pains to captivate the minds of others, and then they subject them to themselves as slaves. We also said that they do well in not suffering their own idea about the Lord to be disturbed by such persons.


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