Supplement.
As a Supplement to the foregoing and a Preliminary to childhood
preparation for regeneration we add that even at birth the very initial
of this preparation has already been taken, by influx of innocence
and peace from the LORD through heaven into the infant during the entire
period of gestation. The prenatal state qualified by celestial innocence
and peace is the essential in every subsequent state and progression. In
Arcana Coelestia we read, -
"The internal man with every one is of the LORD alone.
There the LORD stores up goods and truths with which He gifts man from
infancy. By these He flows into the interior or rational man and by this
into the exterior [or natural man], thus it is given to man to think and
to be a man."-AC 1707.
In this passage the internal man is the inmost A, the
interior or rational man is B, the exterior is C D E F which
together are called the natural or external man.
That this inmost is stored with heavenly principles from
man's very conception is evident from these considerations:
(1.) The inmost is the primordial degree of man's
structure into which the LORD first enters by influx of good and truth
as one. From this degree He forms the will and understanding and flows
into them when formed. (Inf. 8.)
(2.) The LORD conjoins Himself to man at first
conception and forms in him two receptacles to be habitations for Himself
in man, one for love the other for wisdom. (D. W. in AE III.)
(3.) Did not the LORD flow into this first degree
He could not flow into the degrees below or even form them. Thus from conception
this highest degree is filled with the Divine Love and Wisdom from which
the LORD operates to form the faculties below and prepare them for the
work to be accomplished after birth.
That man at birth is imbued with the beginnings of innocence
and peace which are the inmost principles of good and truth of every degree
appears from the Writings:
"The LORD through the inmost heaven insinuates conjugial
love, the angels there being in peace above others. Peace in the heavens
is like spring in the world which gives delight to all things, it is the
celestial itself in its origin. The angels who are there, are the wisest
of all, and from innocence appear to others like infants; they also love
infants far more than their fathers and mothers do. They are present with
infants in the womb and by them the LORD takes care that infants
are nourished and perfected, thus they preside over those who carry in
the womb."-AC 5052
"Love truly conjugial is derived from the love of the
LORD toward the Church and from the love of good and truth which love is
the love of the angels of the third heaven, wherefore love truly conjugial
which thence descends as the love of that heaven, is innocence, which is
the very esse of all the good in the heavens; hence embryos in the womb
are in a state of peace, and infants after they are born are in a state
of innocence. "-AE 985.
"This celestial love flows in out of heaven with mothers
while they carry in the womb as also with the embryos, hence exists the
love of infants with mothers and innocence with infants."-AE 710[a].
"By the womb is signified inmost conjugial love and thence
celestial love in every complex.... The embryo in the womb derives more
from the good of innocence than after it is born."-AE 710[a].
These embryo states of innocence and peace being first in
order are related to the following states as the seed is related to that
which grows from it.