"
To this the several teachers replied in order; first the Pythagoreans,
next the Socratics, and afterwards the rest: but among them there was a
certain Platonist, who spoke last; and his opinion prevailed, which was
to this effect; That the men of the saturnine or golden age knew and
acknowledged that they were forms receptive of life from God; and that
on this account wisdom was inscribed on their souls and hearts, and
hence they saw truth from the light of truth, and by truths perceived
good from the delight of the love thereof: but as mankind in the
following ages receded from the acknowledgement that all the truth of
wisdom and the consequent good of love belonging to them, continually
flowed in from God, they ceased to be habitations of God; and then also
discourse with God, and consociation with angels ceased: for the
interiors of their minds were bent from their direction, which had been
elevated upwards to God from God, into a direction more and more
oblique, outwardly into the world, and thereby to God from God through
the world, and at length inverted into an opposite direction, which is
downwards to self; and as God cannot be looked at by a man interiorly
inverted, and thereby averted, men separated themselves from God, and
were made forms of hell or devils.
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