User:Lord Dropsy

According to the letter of the history, by a certain man who had a dropsy, is meant one who was afflicted with a bodily distemper called by that name, and consisting in a super-abundance of water formed in different parts of the body; but according to the spiritual sense contained in this, as in the other miracles which the lord worked, by a certain man who had a dropsy, is figured the state of the Jewish church at that period, in its perversion of all heavenly good and truth, and particularly in this perversion, that natural knowledge had gained the ascendancy over spiritual, and that thus all spiritual life of love and charity was in danger of being destroyed by the superabundance of mere natural speculation and thought. For such is the correspondence between the natural distemper called the dropsy, and the spiritual perversion of heavenly good and truth here referred to, all the difference between them consisting in this, that the natural distemper is occasioned by a superfluity of natural water, whereas the perversion has its rise in a superfluity of what is signified and represented by water, namely. natural truth; in other words, truth apprehended naturally, and not spiritually. It is said of the above man who had the dropsy, that he was before him (Jesus), denoting, according to the spiritual idea, that the above perversion of all heavenly good and truth in the Jewish church at that period was under divine inspection, being both seen and noted by the divine wisdom.