Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 5461

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5461. Let one of your brethren be bound in the house of your custody. That this signifies that faith in the will must be separated, is evident from the representation of Simeon, who is "one of their brethren who was to be bound" (verse 24), as being faith in the will (see n. 3869-3872, 4497, 4502-4503); and from the signification of "being bound in the house of your custody," as being to be separated (n. 5083, 5101, 5452, 5456). The case herein is that when faith in the will, or the will of doing the truth of faith, is separated from those who are in the truths of the church, then connection with the Divine is so slight that it is hardly more than acknowledgment; for the influx of the Divine from the Lord with the regenerate man is into good and thence into truth, or what is the same, into the will and thence into the understanding. Insofar therefore as the man who is in the truths of faith receives good from the Lord, so far the Lord forms in him a new will in his intellectual part (that it is in the intellectual part may be seen above, n. 927, 1023, 1043, 1044, 2256, 4328, 4493, 5113), and so far the Lord flows in, and produces the affection of doing what is good, that is, of exercising charity toward the neighbor. From all this it is evident what is meant by faith in the will (represented by Simeon) being separated before the intermediate, which is "Benjamin," became present.


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