became level with the perception of angels and finally the perception of man. Hence the Word has a spiritual sense, which is within the natural, just as the soul is in the body, or as thought is in speech, or volition in action.
—True Christian Religion, n. 193
THE LETTER OF THE WORD
THE truths of the sense of the letter of the Word are in part appearances of truth, and are taken from things in nature, and thus accommodated and adapted to the grasp of the simple and also of little children. But being correspondences, they are receptacles and abodes of genuine truth; and are like enclosing and containing vessels. The naked truths themselves, which are enclosed and contained, are in the Word's spiritual sense; and the naked goods in its celestial sense.
The doctrine of genuine truth can also be drawn in full from the literal sense of the Word; for the Word in this sense is like a man clothed, whose face and hands are bare. All that concern's man's life, and so his salvation, is bare; the rest is clothed.
—Doctrine Concerning the Sacred Scripture, nn. 40, 55
