ke
one with our Word by correspondences, it also follows that the sense of
the letter of our Word is the basis, support, and foundation of the
wisdom of the angels of heaven. For the heavens rest upon the human
race as a house rests upon its foundation; so the wisdom of the angels
of heaven rests in like manner upon the knowledge, intelligence, and
wisdom of men from the sense of the letter of the Word; for, as has been
said above, communication and conjunction with the heavens are effected
through the sense of the letter of the Word. For this reason, as a
result of the Lord's Divine providence, there has been no mutilation of
the sense of the letter of the Word from its first revelation, not even
in a word or letter in the original text; for each word, and in some
measure each letter, is a support.

From all this it is clear what a profanation it is to falsify the truths
and adulterate the goods of the Word, and how infernal it is to deny or
to weaken its holiness. As soon as that is done, for that man of the
church heaven is closed. The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which
cannot be forgiven, is the blasphemy of the Word by those who deny its
holiness. Since the Word is the basis of the heavens, and since the
Word was wholly falsified and adulterated by the Jewish nation by
traditions and adaptation of the sense of the letter to favor their evil
loves, lest the heavens should be endangered and the wisdom of the
angels there should become foolishness it pleased the Lord to come down
from heaven and to put on the Human and to become the Word (as is
evident from John i. 14), and thus to restore the state of heaven.
(A.E., n. 1085.)

There is a successive order and there is a simultaneous order. In
successive order things pure and perfect appear above, and those less
pure and perfect appear below. The three heavens are in successive
order, one above another; and in the higher heavens all things are pure
and perfect, while in the lower they are less pure and perfect.
Simultaneous order exists in lower things, and fully in the lowest; for
higher things let themselves down and place themselves in the order that
is called simultaneous, in which the pure and perfect things, which were
the higher, are in the middle or center, and the less pure and perfect,
which were the lower, are in the circumferences. Therefore all things
that have come forth in successive order are together in outmosts in
their order.

As all