it must be known that the battle of the Lord with the hells was not an oral battle as between reasoners and wranglers: such a battle effects nothing at all there. But it was a spiritual battle, which is of Divine truth from Divine good, which was the very vital principle of the Lord; the influx of this though the medium of sight, no one in hell can resist. There is in it such power that the infernal genii flee away at the mere perception of it, cast themselves down into the deep, and creep into caverns that they may hide themselves."[1] Because there was no longer an ultimate love of the Divine good and truth of the Word with men; that is a love and will of obedience to its commandments such as to serve as a medium of Divine enlightenment and power, the Lord himself took on the natural human, lived the Word into it, made it the Divine truth in ultimates, and the medium of Divine power to men.
What the Lord did by the power of the Divine truth in His human, He continues to do through the Word, and gives man by the power of the Word to do in His name,—drive evil spirits back to hell, reject evils from himself, both hereditary and acquired, to
- ↑ True Christian Religion, n. 124.
