A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion/Chapter 17
XVII. The Internal and the External Man.
THE mind of man is both internal and external: by the internal he has communication with heaven and the spiritual world in general; and by the external, he has communication with the natural world. In addition to which internal and external of the mind, he is also furnished with a material body, which for a season confines him to the gross objects of matter, and sense, and space, and time. With the good man the internal is in the light and heat of heaven, which are spiritual; while his external is indeed in the light and heat of the world, which are natural, but at the same time in a state of subordination to, and correspondency with, the internal: and thus in both respects he takes the character of a spiritual man. But with the wicked man the internal of the mind is in a state of separation from heaven, and so far immersed in the delights and pleasures of sense, that with respect both to his internal and his external he is a merely natural man, and has no desire to elevate his thoughts and affections above the things of this world.
In proportion as a man is under the influence of love to the Lord, and love to his neighbour, he is so far in a spiritual internal, and from that he thinks and wills, and likewise speaks and acts. But in proportion as he is under the influence of self-love and the love of the world, he is so far in a natural internal, and from that he thinks and wills, and likewise speaks and acts. The spiritually-internal man, or he in whom the spiritual internal is open, believes in the Lord, in the Word, in a life after death, in a heaven and a hell, and in the things relating to the church. But the naturally-internal man, or he in whom the spiritual internal is closed, and who is therefore a sensual man, believes nothing but what he can see with his eyes, and feel with his hands: thus he is seduced by his senses, and is in mere fallacies as to every thing relating to the Lord, to a state of immortality, to heaven, and to the church.
As man possesses both an external and an internal mind, so has he an exterior and an interior memory, that is, a natural and a spiritual memory. By means of the natural memory he acquires and retains the knowledge of words and expressions of speech, likewise of the various objects which surround him. But by means of the spiritual memory he acquires and retains interior ideas, and is hence able to think and speak intellectually and rationally: for all that a man has thought, spoken, and done, and all that he has heard and seen, however such things may have vanished from his exterior memory, are inscribed in his interior memory, as in a book; and therefore in the Sacred Sripture this latter is called man's book of life, which will be laid open after death, and according to the things written in which he will then be judged.
In short, the external memory, together with all things belonging to the external man, are intended to be subservient to the internal, by laying a basis or ground-work in the natural life, upon which man may hereafter erect for himself a superstructure suited to his future spiritual state of existence, and to that capacity implanted within him, by virtue of which his mind may be perpetually improving even to eternity.
