AC 2832 - "Horns"

AC 2832

"Horns" are mentioned in many places in the Word;
and there mean the power of truth from good;
and in the opposite sense
the power of falsity from evil;
here the meaning is
that the spiritual who are meant by the "ram"
are entangled in natural memory-knowledge
with all their might in regard to truth,
and so they are deprived of the power
of perceiving truths.
For the more anyone
consults natural memory-knowledges,
and sticks fast in them in his animus and mind
in regard to the things which are truths of faith,
the more does he lose the light of truth,
and with the light,
the life of truth.
Everyone may know this from experience,
if he attends and reflects,
from those who say that they can believe nothing
unless they comprehend that it is so
by means of the things of sense,
or of memory-knowledge.
If you explore their quality,
you will find that they believe nothing;
and moreover that nothing seems to them more wise
than to ascribe everything to nature.
There are many also who say that they believe
although they do not comprehend;
when nevertheless, in secret with themselves,
they reason equally as others do
from the things of sense and memory-knowledge
concerning the truths of faith,
as to whether a thing is so.
These either have a kind of persuasion breathed in
from the love of self and the world,
or they do not believe at all.
Their quality is manifest from their life.
Both classes are indeed in the Lord's spiritual church,
but they are not of the church.
Those who are of the church are in a life of good,
and have faith in truths;
but the spiritual have faith in other truths
besides those which have been
impressed on them from infancy,
and which they have afterwards confirmed to themselves
from doctrine or from some other source.
Such is the state of the spiritual,
which state is here described by the
"ram caught in the thicket by his horns" (Genesis 22:13).