48. Your judging [one another] is only the hurt and wound of the world, wherewith you make the ignorant to err, and bring them to blaspheme. You teach them [the art of ] censuring and condemning, and youyourselves have not the true knowledge in the Spirit of God; you do not teach yourselves, and yet you will be teaching and judging others. And in this way and course you are all, one with another, the disinherited children of Keturah ; you contend, bite and devour one another about Abraham's, viz. Christ's, goods, and yet you have them not: if you had them, then you would have the love of Christ, which is the true goods.
49. No knowledge without the love of Christ is at all available to the sonship: it is only Babel, and fable; teaching, and yet effecting and doing nothing, save only honouring the idol Mausim in itself. The knowledge of the high schools, and the knowledge of the devil, without the spirit of Christ in love, do both of them bring only contention and desolation.
50. If the devil had not known in self, then he had been [remained to this day] an angel; and if Adam had not desired the self-knowledge without God's love, he had continued in Paradise. If the high schools did not know the sharp acute disputing, they had continued in the simplicity of Christ, and had not brought the whole world, with their contention and disputings, into opinions, and judgings of one another, so that now there is nothing but contemning and condemning in Christendom, and all love and truth is extinct; and men have set and put salvation in opinions [in this or that way and form], and bound the Master to the servant, so that Antichrist domineers over Christ, and yet pretends all for Christ; but indeed he thereby only honours and minds his Lucifer, and his belly-god Mausim, as it is plainly to be seen.
51. Now after that Abraham had sent away all the children of the concubines from Isaac's goods, with gifts towards the east, as Moses says, they came into the east country, that is, into the dominion and government of nature, where the essence begins. And Abraham died in a quiet age, when he was old and full of years, and was buried by his Sarah in the cave of Machpelah, which is before Mamre (Gen. xxv. 6-9).
The inward figure is this:
52. Abraham's natural children of the concubines went towards the east: Here the spirit points at the figure of the whole man, when Christ has manifested himself in man, and possessed his goods, as here Isaac. Then nature goes into the east,l viz. into the Father's property, and works, according to the soul, in the first and third Principles; and Christ sits in the midst, viz. in the second Principle, and rules over that which nature in the Father's property does form and fashion in the divine wisdom.
53. Therefore Moses says here, that they went towards the east, and points secretly in his figure at the property of man, signifying how nature does possess the east,2 viz. the beginning or rise of the dominion; even as Christ also said, that He was as a Vine-dresser who did glean. In God's kingdom, nature is Christ's servant, but in the kingdom of nature's self or propriety, Christ has given himself with his humility to be a servant, and an assistant, and serves the Father in his natural manifestation, and continually picks up or gleans: what the Father forms through nature, that the Wisdom brings into its treasure.
54. Therefore says St. Paul, that the Spirit of God is subject to the
48. Your judging [one another] is only the hurt and wound of the world, wherewith you make the ignorant to err, and bring them to blaspheme. You teach them [the are of ] censuring and condemning, and youyourselves have not the true knowledge in the Spirit of God; you do not teach yourselves, and yet you will be teaching and judging others. And in this way and course you are all, one with another, the disinherited children of Keturah ; you contend, bite and devour one another about Abraham's, viz. Christ's, goods, and yet you have them not: if you had them, then you would have the love of Christ, which is the true goods.
49. No knowledge without the love of Christ is at all available to the sonship: it is only Babel, and fable; teaching, and yet effecting and doing nothing, save only honouring the idol Mausim in itself. The knowledge of the high schools, and the knowledge of the devil, without the spirit of Christ in love, do both of them bring only contention and desolation.
50. If the devil had not known in self, then he had been [remained to this day] an angel; and if Adam had not desired the self-knowledge without God's love, he had continued in Paradise. If the high schools did not know the sharp acute disputing, they had continued in the simplicity of Christ, and had not brought the whole world, with their contention and disputings, into opinions, and judgings of one another, so that now there is nothing but contemning and condemning in Christendom, and all love and truth is extinct; and men have set and put salvation in opinions [in this or that way and form], and bound the Master to the servant, so that Antichrist domineers over Christ, and yet pretends all for Christ; but indeed he thereby only honours and minds his Lucifer, and his belly-god Mausim, as it is plainly to be seen.
51. Now after that Abraham had sent away all the children of the concubines from Isaac's goods, with gifts towards the east, as Moses says, they came into the east country, that is, into the dominion and government of nature, where the essence begins. And Abraham died in a quiet age, when he was old and full of years, and was buried by his Sarah in the cave of Machpelah, which is before Mamre (Gen. xxv. 6-9).
The inward figure is this:
52. Abraham's natural children of the concubines went towards the east: Here the spirit points at the figure of the whole man, when Christ has manifested himself in man, and possessed his goods, as here Isaac. Then nature goes into the east,l viz. into the Father's property, and works, according to the soul, in the first and third Principles; and Christ sits in the midst, viz. in the second Principle, and rules over that which nature in the Father's property does form and fashion in the divine wisdom.
53. Therefore Moses says here, that they went towards the east, and points secretly in his figure at the property of man, signifying how nature does possess the east,2 viz. the beginning or rise of the dominion; even as Christ also said, that He was as a Vine-dresser who did glean. In God's kingdom, nature is Christ's servant, but in the kingdom of nature's self or propriety, Christ has given himself with his humility to be a servant, and an assistant, and serves the Father in his natural manifestation, and continually picks up or gleans: what the Father forms through nature, that the Wisdom brings into its treasure.
54. Therefore says St. Paul, that the Spirit of God is subject to the
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