a regard to the divine laws, when external considerations are taken away and they are left to their internal promptings, act wisely, because they are conjoined with the angels of heaven from whom wisdom is communicated to them. From these considerations it may now be clearly seen, that a spiritual man can act precisely like a natural man in the affairs of civil and moral life, provided he be conjoined to the Divine as to his internal man, or as to his will and thought.
The laws of spiritual life, of civil life and of moral life, are also delivered in the ten precepts of the decalogue; in the first three,[1] the laws of spiritual life, in the four following, the laws of civil life, and in the last three, the laws of moral life. The merely natural man lives in outward conformity to all these precepts, in the same manner as the spiritual man; for like him he worships the Divine, goes to church, hears sermons, and assumes a devout
- ↑ [The division of the commandments followed by the author, is the same as that adopted in the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches; according to which, the first commandment includes the first and second of the Church of England division; and the last in the Church of England division is divided into two. Thus the first three, as mentioned above, are what are commonly reckoned, among Protestant Christians, the first four; the next four are what are commonly called the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth; and the last three are those commonly reckoned the ninth and tenth.—Ed.]
