The essential reason why the Lord
opens the internal spiritual man, and implants this in the external
natural man, is, because every man thinks and acts naturally, and
therefore could not perceive any thing spiritual, and receives it in his
natural principle, unless the Lord had assumed the human natural, and
had made this also divine. From these considerations now it appears a
truth that the Israelitish nation was permitted to marry several wives,
because the Christian church was not with them.
341. VIII. AT THIS DAY THE MAHOMETANS ARE PERMITTED TO MARRY SEVERAL
WIVES, BECAUSE THEY DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THE LORD JESUS CHRIST TO BE ONE
WITH JEHOVAH THE FATHER, AND THEREBY TO BE THE GOD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH,
AND HENCE CANNOT RECEIVE LOVE TRULY CONJUGIAL. The Mahometans, in
conformity to the religion which Mahomet gave them, acknowledge Jesus
Christ to be the Son of God and a grand prophet, and that he was sent
into the world by God the Father to teach mankind; but not that God the
Father and he are one, and that his divine and human (principle) are one
person, united as soul and body, agreeably to the faith of all
Christians as grounded in the Athanasian Creed; therefore the followers
of Mahomet could not acknowledge our Lord to be any God from eternity,
but only to be a perfect natural man; and this being the opinion
entertained by Mahomet, and thence by his disciples, and they knowing
that God is one, and that that God is he who created the universe,
therefore they could do no other than pass by our Lord in their worship;
and the more so, because they declare Mahomet also to be a grand
prophet; neither do they know what the Lord taught.
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