yet from ourselves as of ourselves:" and then they continued, "A
tree signifies a man, and the fruit thereof the good of life; hence the
tree of life signifies a man living from God, or God living in man; and
since love and wisdom, and charity and faith, or good and truth,
constitute the life of God in man, therefore these are signified by the
tree of life, and hence man has eternal life: the like is signified by
the tree of life, of which it will be given to eat, Rev. ii. 7; chap
xxii. 2, 14. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil signifies a man
believing that he lives from himself and not from God; thus that in man
love and wisdom, charity and faith, that is, good and truth, are his and
not God's; believing this, because he thinks and wills, and speaks and
acts to all appearance, as from himself: and as a man from this faith
persuades himself, that God has implanted himself, or infused his divine
into him, therefore the serpent said, '_God doth know, in the day that
ye eat of the fruit of that tree, your eyes will be opened, and ye will
be as God, knowing good and evil_,' Gen. iii. 5. Eating of those trees
signifies reception and appropriation; eating of the tree of life, the
reception of life eternal, and eating of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, the reception of damnation; therefore also both Adam and
his wife, together with the serpent, were cursed: the serpent means the
devil as to self-love and the conceit of his own intelligence. This love
is the possessor of that tree; and the men who are in conceit, grounded
in that love, are those trees. Those persons, therefore, are grievously
mistaken who believe that Adam was wise and did good from himself, and
that this was his state of integrity; when yet Adam himself was cursed
by reason of that belief; for this is signified by eating of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil; therefore he then fell from the state of
integrity in which he had been, in consequence of believing that he was
wise and did good from God and not at all from himself; for this is
meant by eating of the tree of life. The Lord alone, when he was in the
world, was wise and did good from himself; because the essential divine
from birth was in him and was his; therefore also from his own ability
he was made the Redeemer and Saviour." From all these considerations
they came to this conclusion, "That by the tree of life, and the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, and eating there