1. The Sacred Scripture, or Word, Is Divine Truth Itself

Everyone says that the Word comes from God, is Divinely inspired, and so is holy. But even so, no one has known before this wherein the Divinity in it lies. For in its letter the Word appears as though written in the ordinary way, in a foreign style, neither as sublime or nor as lucid as writings of the present age seem to be.

As a result, a person who worships nature as God, or in preference to God, and so thinks prompted by self and his own self-interest, and not prompted by heaven in response to the Lord, may easily fall into error regarding the Word, and into scorning it, and when reading it, saying to himself, “What is this? What is that? Is this Divine? Can God, whose wisdom is infinite, speak so? Where is the holiness in it, and what makes it holy, other than some teaching of religion and so conviction?”

56. One may believe that a doctrine of genuine truth can be acquired by means of the Word’s spiritual sense, which is obtained through a knowledge of correspondences. But doctrine is not acquired by means of that sense, but is only illustrated and corroborated by it. For as we said in no. 26 above, no one arrives at the spiritual sense through correspondences unless he first possesses genuine truths from doctrine. If he does not possess genuine truths first, a person may falsify the Word by applying some correspondences that he knows and connecting them and interpreting them to support something lodged in his mind from a preconceived premise.

In addition, the spiritual sense is granted to a person only by the Lord, and He protects it, as He protects heaven, inasmuch as heaven is present in it.

It is better, therefore, for a person to study the Word in its literal sense. That alone is the source of doctrine.