Christendom arrogate divine power to themselves,
want to be worshiped as gods, and invoke the dead.
5. And there are those who place salvation in certain phrases which they
are to think and speak and not at all in good works which they are to do;
likewise there are few who live their religion.
6. Besides there are heretical ideas; these have been many and some exist
today, like those of the Quakers, Moravians and Anabaptists, besides
others.
7. Judaism also persists.

As a result, one who denies divine providence concludes that religion in
itself is nothing, but still is needed to serve as a restraint.

239. To these more arguments can be added today by which those who think
interiorly in favor of nature and of human prudence alone can still
further confirm themselves. For example:

1. All Christendom has acknowledged three Gods, not knowing that God is
one in essence and in person and that He is the Lord.
2. It has not been known before this that there is a spiritual sense in
each particular of the Word from which it derives its holiness.
3. Again, Christians have not known that to avoid evils as sins is the
Christian religion itself.
4. It has also been unknown that the human being lives as such after
death.

For men may ask themselves and one another, "Why does divine providence,
if it exists, reveal such things for the first time now?"

240. All the points listed in nn. 236-239 have been put forward in order
that it may be seen that each and all things which take place in the
world are of divine providence; consequently divine providence is in the
least of man's thoughts and actions and thereby is universal. But this
cannot be seen unless the points are taken up one by one; therefore they
will be explained briefly in the order in which they were listed,
beginning with n. 236.

241. _The wisest of human beings, Adam and his wife, allowed themselves
to be led astray by the serpent, and God in His divine providence did not
avert this._ This is because by Adam and his wife the first human beings
created in the world are not meant, but the people of the Most Ancient
Church, whose new creation or regeneration is described thus: their
creation anew or regeneration in Genesis 1 by the creation of heaven and
earth; their wisdom and intelligence by the Garden of Eden; and the end
of that church by their eating of the tree of knowledge. For the Word in
its bosom is spiritual, containing arcana of divine wisdom, and in