To sum up the rational argument for the truth of Swedenborg's disclosure on this subject:
We have ample warrant for affirming that garments, even in this world, subserve a spiritual as well as a natural use; that they are required not less to satisfy the wants and appetencies of the soul, than the immanent needs of the body. And as the soul is immortal, and retains all its wants and appetencies when released from the incumbrance of gross matter, it will desire garments in the spiritual world. And since all lawful desires (and the angels have no others) will be gratified in heaven, therefore its denizens must be clad in garments. And because of that great and universal law which determines the aspect of all outward things in the spiritual world, their garments must correspond to their states of intelligence, and change with the changes of their states as Swedenborg has many times declared.
Let us now look at the Scripture testimony. The Bible makes frequent mention of angels, and always speaks of them as being clothed. Their garments, or the color and aspect of them, are often spoken of. Thus it is said of the angel that rolled the stone away from the door of the sepulchre, that "his countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow." And when the weeping Mary looked into the sepulchre, the record says she saw "two angels in white, sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain." And Luke speaks of these two angels as "two men in shining garments." (xxiv. 4.) And in the Revelation the four and twenty elders are spoken of as "clothed in white raiment." They, also,
