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in order to keep a balance within the life He had created here , there were creatures that can be called predators , and those called prey . This duality in creation has continued ever since
Predators are often thought of as scary and fearful beasts and I think that the scariness is part of the answer to the naming of certain beasts that are called evil in the Word . Some of the scariness is rational , we should be scared of leopards , crocodiles and poisonous snakes , and if we ever saw one ( outside the zoo ) we should be scared . With rats and mice the reaction might be more disgust than fear . And some people have an irrational fear of some animal that really couldn ’ t hurt them .
Although animals live in the order they are given , and cannot be evil , they can correspond to affections in men that are evil . And though hell can ’ t create any physical beings at all , they can create the appearance of monsters , and do , as they contemplate the corresponding harm they wish to do to their companions , or us down here , just as angels create appearances of gentle creatures or gardens that correspond to their loving affections .
Science in the Mid-1700s I want to insert here some idea of what scholarly people , including Swedenborg , might have accepted as fixed scientific truth in the years when he was writing and publishing ; what to those people was up-to-date science . About the same time that Swedenborg started to turn his scientific mind to a new source of truth , other inquisitive minds were doing more open thinking about the natural world .
Earlier , before Swedenborg was born , the leading thinkers about natural philosophy were looking at the Bible as a source document to pin down the dates to determine the age of the world , and at that point they felt that they could use it just as they could use documentation from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians .
In 1654 , a work was published by the Rev . James Ussher , who had been bishop of the Irish church . Himself a Calvinist , he was a very conciliatory man who tried hard to bring religious peace to Ireland . This scholarly work concerned the age of the earth . No one questioned that the stories of Genesis could lead to an answer , but there were different versions .
Ussher chose a Masoritic text as being the most accurate because the Masorites were so careful . His calculation was that creation started in October , 4004 B . C ., and of course took seven days . Other scholars might quibble about days or months , but this date was generally accepted by the churches and by the learned .
We can find four places where this date is accepted and used by Swedenborg . Two of these are from a memorable relation used both in Conjugial Love 182 and True Christian Religion 693 . There is a third in Conjugial Love 29 , and the
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