354. When the angels had finished saying this and had left, two priests arrived accompanied by a man who in the world had been his country's ambassador. I repeated to them what I had heard from the angels. On hearing this they began to argue about intelligence and wisdom, and so about prudence, whether they were from God or from man. It was a fierce argument. All three of them at heart believed alike that these were from man, because they were in man; and they claimed that actual perception and feeling confirmed that this is so. But the priests, being then under the influence of religious zeal, insisted that nothing of intelligence and wisdom, and so of prudence, came from man. But when the ambassador retorted that in this case nothing of thought could either, they insisted that this too was so.
But since in heaven it was perceived that the three of them shared a similar belief, the king's ambassador was told, 'Put on a priest's clothes and convince yourself you are a priest, and then speak.' He did so, and he believed. Then he spoke out loud, saying that no intelligence or wisdom, and so no prudence, could be granted except by God, and he employed his usual eloquence to prove it fully by rational arguments. It is a special feature of the spiritual world that a spirit thinks himself to be what the clothes he wears indicate. The reason is that it is the intellect which clothes each person there.
[2] Then the two priests were told from heaven, 'Take off your clothes, and put on those of ministers of state, and convince yourselves that is what you are.' They did so, and at once they thought from their inward nature and used the arguments they inwardly approved in speaking in favour of their own intelligence. At that instant a tree was seen near the path. They were told, 'It is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; take care not to eat from it.' But still the three, made foolish by their own intelligence, were fired with the desire to eat from it, so they said to each other, 'Why shouldn't we? It's good fruit. isn't it?' So they went up to it and ate. Then immediately the three became bosom friends, because they shared a similar belief; and they started out together on the path of one's own intelligence, which leads to hell. However, I saw them brought back from there, because they were not yet prepared.
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