XXVI. Swedenhorg. " Now, because the Word is

such, appearances of truth, which are truths clothed, may be taken for naked truths, which, when they are confirmed, [by reasonings founded on the mere ap- pearances of things as presented to the senses,] become fallacies, which in themselves are falses. From this, that appearances of truth may be taken for naked truths
300 bWEDENBOEG, [Ch. XII.
and confirmed, have sprung all the heresies which have been, and still are, in the Cliristian world. Heresies ihcm selves do 7iot condemn men; but confirmations of the falsities, which are in a heresy, from the Word, and by reasonings from the natural man and an evil life, do con- demn." T. a B. p. 192.
Spinoza. " But the reason why men have not an equally clear knowledge of Grod and of common notions is, they cannot imagine God as they do bodies, and they have connected the name of God with images of things which they are in the habit of seeing ; [which last, ac- cording to both Swedenborg and Spinoza, are only ap- pearances of truth,] and this is the origin of most con- troversies, that men either do not correctly express their own meaning, or do not correctly interpret the meaning of others. * * * I -^jgli you to remark, that the imaginations of the mind, regarded in themselves y con- tain no error; or, the mind does not therefore err because it imagines ; but only inasmuch as it is without an idea w^hich precludes the existence of those things which it imagines to be present. For if the mind, when it is im- agining non-existing things as present to itself, knows at the same time that the things do not exist, it will cer- tianly attribute this power of imagining, not to any de- fect, but to the action (power) of its own nature." Eth. part. 4, props. 17, 47, & schol.