ified, as well as sun, moon and stars. As all their
worship was representative, consisting of sheer correspondences, they
worshiped on mountains and hills and in groves and gardens, regarded
fountains as sacred, and in adoration of God faced the rising sun.
Furthermore, they made graven images of horses, oxen, calves and lambs,
and of birds, fish and serpents, and placed them in their houses and
elsewhere, arranged according to the spiritual things of the church to
which they corresponded or which they represented. They placed similar
objects in their temples, too, to put them in mind of the holy things
they signified.

[3] Later, when the knowledge of correspondences had been lost, their
posterity began to worship the graven images themselves, as holy in
themselves, not knowing that their forefathers had seen no holiness in
them, but only that they represented holy things by correspondences and
thus signified them. So arose the idolatries which filled the whole
world, Africa and Europe as well as Asia with its adjacent islands. In
order that all these idolatries might be uprooted, of the Lord's divine
providence it was brought about that a new religion, adapted to the
genius of Orientals, should start up, in which there would be something
from each Testament of the Word, and which would teach that the Lord had
come into the world and was a very great prophet, wisest of all, and Son
of God. This was done through Mohammed, from whom the religion is called
the Mohammedan religion.

[4] Of the Lord's divine providence this religion was raised up and, as
we said, adapted to the genius of Orientals, in order that it might
destroy the idolatries of so many peoples and give them some knowledge of
the Lord before they passed into the spiritual world. This religion would
not have been accepted by so many kingdoms or had the power to uproot
idolatries, had it not suited and met the ideas and thinking of them all.
It did not acknowledge the Lord as God of heaven and earth, for the
Orientals acknowledged God the Creator of the universe, but could not
comprehend that He came into the world and assumed human nature, quite as
Christians do not comprehend this, who therefore separate His divine from
His humanity in their thinking and place His divine near the Father in
heaven and His humanity they know not where.

[5] Hence it may be seen that the Mohammedan religion arose under the
Lord's divine providence and that all adherents of