ii. 7; chap
xxii. 2, 14. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil signifies a man
believing that he lives from himself and not from God; thus that in man
love and wisdom, charity and faith, that is, good and truth, are his and
not God's; believing this, because he thinks and wills, and speaks and
acts to all appearance, as from himself: and as a man from this faith
persuades himself, that God has implanted himself, or infused his divine
into him, therefore the serpent said, '_God doth know, in the day that
ye eat of the fruit of that tree, your eyes will be opened, and ye will
be as God, knowing good and evil_,' Gen. iii. 5. Eating of those trees
signifies reception and appropriation; eating of the tree of life, the
reception of life eternal, and eating of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, the reception of damnation; therefore also both Adam and
his wife, together with the serpent, were cursed: the serpent means the
devil as to self-love and the conceit of his own intelligence. This love
is the possessor of that tree; and the men who are in conceit, grounded
in that love, are those trees.
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