1462. These things seem to signify that the learned who are exterior men apprehend and teach nothing but exterior things. Thus they insist upon the literal expressions which they explain according to their own bias, at one time taking exterior, at another interior things, and thus distorting and making use of either sense so as to bend it to their own opinions. The persons who seem to be understood here are they who persecute the interior and more interior sense of the Word, especially they who consider themselves more learned than others. They despise others in comparison with themselves and at the same time are proud, and they desire the things of the body and the world. That such spirits persecuted him who represented the interior sense is what seems to be signified. Whether any such thing will again flow into the doctrine, I do not as yet know; at least the unlearned do not act in this way. 1748, Mar. 16, 17.