This follows from the two preceding articles, that the Divine apart from
space is in all space, and apart from time is in all time. Moreover, there
are spaces greater and greatest, and lesser and least; and since spaces
and times, as said above, make one, it is the same with times. In these
the Divine is the same, because the Divine is not varying and changeable,
as everything is which belongs to nature, but is unvarying and
unchangeable, consequently the same everywhere and always.
78. It seems as if the Divine were not the same in one person as in
another; as if, for instance, it were different in the wise and in the
simple, or in an old man and in a child. But this is a fallacy arising
from appearance; the man is different, but the Divine in him is not
different. Man is a recipient, and the recipient or receptacle is what
varies. A wise man is a recipient of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom more
adequately, and therefore more fully, than a simple man; and an old man
who is also wise, more than a little child or boy; yet the Divine is the
same in the one as in the other. It is in like manner a fallacy arising
from appearance, that the Divine is different with angels of heaven from
what it is with men on the earth, because the angels of heaven are in
wisdom ineffable, while men are not; but the seeming difference is not
in the Lord but in the subjects, according to the quality of their
reception of the Divine.
79. That the Divine is the same in things greatest and least, may be
shown by means of heaven and by means of an angel there. The Divine in
the whole heaven and the Divine in an angel is the same; therefore even
the whole heaven may appear as one angel. So is it with the church, and
with a man of the church. The greatest form receptive of the Divine is
the whole heaven together with the whole church; the least is an angel
of heaven and a man of the church. Sometimes an entire society of heaven
has appeared to me as one angel-man; and it was told that it may appear
like a man as large as a giant, or like a man as small as an infant; and
this, because the Divine in things greatest and least is the same.
80. The Divine is also the same in the greatest and in the least of all
created things that are not alive; for it is in all the good of their use.
These, moreover, are not alive for the reason that they are not forms of
life but forms of uses; and the form varies according to the excellence
of the use. But how the Divine is in these things will be stated in what
follows, where creation is treated of.
81. Put away space, and deny the possibility of a vacuum, and then think
of Divine Love and of Divine Wisdom as being Essence itself, space having
been put away and a vacuum denied. Then think according to space; and you
will perceive that the Divine, in the greatest and in the least things of
space, is the same; for in essence abstracted from space there is neither
great nor small, but only the same.
82. Something shall now be said about vacuum. I once heard angels talking
with Newton about vacuum, and saying that they could not tolerate the
idea of a vacuum as being nothing, for the reason that in their world
which is spiritual, and which is within or above the spaces and times
of the natural world, they equally feel, think, are affected, love, will,
breathe, yea, speak and act, which would be utterly impossible in a vacuum
which is nothing, since nothing is nothing, and of nothing not anything
can be affirmed. Newton said that he now knew that the Divine, which is
Being itself, fills all things, and that to him the idea of nothing as
applied to vacuum is horrible, because that idea is destructive of all
things; and he exhorts those who talk with him about vacuum to guard
against the idea of nothing, comparing it to a swoon, because in nothing
no real activity of mind is possible.