DEUTERONOMY 29
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Deuteronomy Chapter 29

Verses 1-9. A brief résumé of the past, showing from experience the necessity of keeping the Divine commands.
Verses 10-15. All the faculties of the soul are present before the Lord, who desires to bring them all to Himself, as well as their future developments.
Verses 16, 17. The evils of the unregenerate heart have now been perceived.
Verses 18-21. Let not anyone imagine that it is possible to follow after these evils and yet retain spiritual life.
Verses 22-28. The higher principles of the mind become, if perverted, more depraved than those which are external.
Verse 29. The operation of Divine Providence is secret, but this is plain, that the Divine commands must be worked out in the life.

These are the words of the covenant, which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.

Now these are the rules to conjoin the soul to the Lord as given by Him through the Word for the use of those regenerating when advanced to a state of natural good, and derived from experience, besides the rules already given them when truths were first implanted in the soul.

And Moses called to all Israel, and said to them, You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land;

And the Word proclaims to all who are regenerating, and instructs them as follows: You have seen what has been done before your understanding upon the natural principle separate from the spiritual, and all the things in the mind which serve it, and the state of the mind in which it bears rule.

The great temptations which your eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles:

The spiritual combats by which the soul was delivered from that state which were evident to you, and the proofs to your understanding, that the theories of the natural unregenerate heart are false, and to your affections that the things it loves are evil:

Yet the LORD has not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day.

Yet still you are unable to love what is good above all things, and fully believe the truth, and carry them out in the life, even in the state to which you have now advanced.

And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and your shoe is not waxen old upon your foot.

And the Lord has led you through all the periods of spiritual want and temptation; the truths of faith given have been sufficient for you; the external principles given to help your walk through life have not failed you.

You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink: that you might know that I am the LORD your God.

You have been preserved from appropriating evil, or false doctrine, or persuasions that destroy intelligence, that you might be convinced of the truth that there is no other God than the Divine Humanity of the Lord, who is Love itself and Wisdom itself.

And when you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, came out against us to battle, and we smote them:

And when you came to this present state of good in externals, the loves of self and of the world, which rule hereditarily in the natural mind, came forth to combat the regenerating soul led by Divine truth, and were overcome by them:

And we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half tribe of Manasseh.

And these principles were made subservient to spiritual faith and a life resulting therefrom, and to the new will-principle in the natural mind.

Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.

Keep, therefore, in this state, as instructed by former experience, the commandments necessary to conjoin the soul to the Lord, and carry them out in the life, that you may be completely regenerated, and be happy to eternity.

You stand this day all of you before the LORD your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel,

Everything in the souls of those who are regenerating is present before the Divine Love and Wisdom, and accurately discriminated; their chief principles of action and thought; whatever they have of wisdom; their motives, and everything ranged under them; all that is capable of regeneration within them;

Your little ones, your wives, and your stranger that is in your camp, from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water:

The goods of innocence implanted in the soul in infancy; the new proprium, or life from the new regenerate affections given by the Lord, and all external truths which are in accordance with laws of heavenly order in the soul; from those which are subservient to good affections, to those which procure truths.

That you should enter into covenant with the LORD your God, and into his oath, which the LORD your God makes with you this day:

It is the will of the Lord that you should be conjoined with all these to Him by a life according to the precepts of the Divine Love and Wisdom, and secure to yourself the blessings which He desires for you to eternity;

That he may establish you today for a people to himself, and that he may be to you a God, as he has said to you, and as he has sworn to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

That He may establish you for ever to be receptive of the truths that come from Him, and that your life may be conformed to Divine truth, according to the Word, and to the heavenly order which He has appointed to unite the soul to Himself by means of the Divine Humanity, both as to the internal, which is effected by love; the rational, which is effected by truth; and the natural degree, which is from both. (See chap 1:8, Note.)

Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath;

Neither with those faculties which are now present in the mind only, does the Lord promise this conjunction and these blessings;

But with him that stands here with us this day before the LORD our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day:

But with those who are now capable of being united to the Lord, and also with those which are not at present developed in the soul:

(For you know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which you passed by;

For the regenerate know that they have been merely natural, without spiritual life, and how by the guidance of Divine truth they were led through the opposing evils of the unregenerate heart and passed by them;

And you have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them:)

And they have seen how abominable they are in the sight of heaven, their internal filthiness and defilement, and their simulated worship from evils of doctrine and falses of doctrine; in which the apparent truth leads to what is false both in doctrine and life, and the apparent good to what is evil both in doctrine and life:

Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turns away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood;

Lest there should be amongst you any thought, or affection, or evils derived from some falsity or false doctrine which should induce the will even in this regenerating state to turn from Divine good and truth to follow after those false principles which favour evil; lest in bringing forth the principles of the spiritual man into the natural life, evil should be mixed with good, or truth falsified, by the imagination that an evil life can be compatible with true religion;

And it come to pass, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:

And it comes to pass that when he who is regenerating hears from the Word the warning of the inevitable punishment which follows evil, that he flatters himself that all will be well with him, though he follows the leadings of his unregenerate will, thus from ignorance of truth accepting a manifestly absurd dogma as true doctrine, namely, that salvation is possible for any one who neglects the laws given to enable him to obtain salvation; or that anything can save or be put as a substitute for patiently working out and doing the commandments of the Lord:

The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven.

Those who commit sin cannot be unpunished. The Lord's protection of those in heaven and zeal for the salvation of all will appear as anger against the sinner; he will bring upon himself all the evils which are described in this book, and he will be removed from the number of those who are saved and regenerate.

And the LORD shall separate him to evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law:

And the Lord's mercy for others will require that that man or that evil principle be separated from the Church, or from the soul on account of the evils which it would bring, by preventing conjunction of others or other faculties of the soul with the Lord, as written in this book of God's holy law:

So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD has laid upon it;

So that the principles derived from your present conduct which will succeed in future states, and the rationality derived from natural lumen alone having little in common with the true principles of the Church, shall inquire, when the vastation of the good and truth derived from regeneration, and the irruption of evil into the interiors of the soul is perceived;

And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor bears, nor any grass grows therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:

And that all good affections and right principles are destroyed, and that all love of good in the internal will is extinct; that no truths are learned there, nor is there any acknowledgement of them in faith or action, nor do any true scientifics grow therein by which the truth of faith can come; but the whole soul is one mass of evil and falsity from the loves of self and the world, and from a false external worship in which these principles rule, which cannot but be dissipated when genuine good and truth flow in from the Lord:

Even all nations shall say, Wherefore has the LORD done thus to this land? what means the heat of this great anger?

Then shall even those principles in the soul which are merely external inquire, Why do all these evils come upon those things in the mind which were derived from the Church and revelation? and whence comes this great domination of the lust of evil? [Note.—Those principles in the mind which are capable of the highest perfection, become, if perverted, the most degraded.]

Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt:

And the internal dictate of conscience shall reply that it is because they have neglected to carry out the commandments of the Divine Love and Wisdom as given in former states to bring them to Himself, when the means of regeneration were placed before them to bring them out of a merely natural state.

For they went and served other gods, and worshiped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given to them:

For they left the true path of life to follow the falses which favoured their evil loves, and worshiped these as true doctrines, though they were opposed to the knowledges of the soul, and were not given by the Word.

And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book:

So that the soul (or the Church) rejected the influx from the Lord by which it might have been regenerated, and brought upon itself all the evils of which warning is given in this book:

And the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.

So that they entirely plucked themselves away from the Lord's Church, and can derive no nourishment thence (like a plant plucked up by the roots) by being adverse to its principles both in will and faith, and burn with the vehement lust of evil, and thus come into a fresh state in which they derive influx from hell.

The secret things belong to the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.

The way in which the goodness and wisdom of the Lord lead the soul by His Providence is secret and concealed for wise reasons; but this is clearly revealed in every state, and made patent to every rational principle in the mind, "If you would enter into life, keep the commandments" (Matt 19:17).

DEUTERONOMY 29 Other translations - previous - next - notes - discussion - Deuteronomy - BM Home - Full Page

These are the words of the covenant, which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.	Now these are the rules to conjoin the soul to the Lord as given by Him through the Word for the use of those regenerating when advanced to a state of natural good, and derived from experience, besides the rules already given them when truths were first implanted in the soul.
And Moses called to all Israel, and said to them, You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land;	And the Word proclaims to all who are regenerating, and instructs them as follows: You have seen what has been done before your understanding upon the natural principle separate from the spiritual, and all the things in the mind which serve it, and the state of the mind in which it bears rule.
The great temptations which your eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles:	The spiritual combats by which the soul was delivered from that state which were evident to you, and the proofs to your understanding, that the theories of the natural unregenerate heart are false, and to your affections that the things it loves are evil:
Yet the LORD has not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day.	Yet still you are unable to love what is good above all things, and fully believe the truth, and carry them out in the life, even in the state to which you have now advanced.
And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and your shoe is not waxen old upon your foot.	And the Lord has led you through all the periods of spiritual want and temptation; the truths of faith given have been sufficient for you; the external principles given to help your walk through life have not failed you.
You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink: that you might know that I am the LORD your God.	You have been preserved from appropriating evil, or false doctrine, or persuasions that destroy intelligence, that you might be convinced of the truth that there is no other God than the Divine Humanity of the Lord, who is Love itself and Wisdom itself.
And when you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, came out against us to battle, and we smote them:	And when you came to this present state of good in externals, the loves of self and of the world, which rule hereditarily in the natural mind, came forth to combat the regenerating soul led by Divine truth, and were overcome by them:
And we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half tribe of Manasseh.	And these principles were made subservient to spiritual faith and a life resulting therefrom, and to the new will-principle in the natural mind.
Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.	Keep, therefore, in this state, as instructed by former experience, the commandments necessary to conjoin the soul to the Lord, and carry them out in the life, that you may be completely regenerated, and be happy to eternity.
You stand this day all of you before the LORD your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel,	Everything in the souls of those who are regenerating is present before the Divine Love and Wisdom, and accurately discriminated; their chief principles of action and thought; whatever they have of wisdom; their motives, and everything ranged under them; all that is capable of regeneration within them;
Your little ones, your wives, and your stranger that is in your camp, from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water:	The goods of innocence implanted in the soul in infancy; the new proprium, or life from the new regenerate affections given by the Lord, and all external truths which are in accordance with laws of heavenly order in the soul; from those which are subservient to good affections, to those which procure truths.
That you should enter into covenant with the LORD your God, and into his oath, which the LORD your God makes with you this day:	It is the will of the Lord that you should be conjoined with all these to Him by a life according to the precepts of the Divine Love and Wisdom, and secure to yourself the blessings which He desires for you to eternity;
That he may establish you today for a people to himself, and that he may be to you a God, as he has said to you, and as he has sworn to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.	That He may establish you for ever to be receptive of the truths that come from Him, and that your life may be conformed to Divine truth, according to the Word, and to the heavenly order which He has appointed to unite the soul to Himself by means of the Divine Humanity, both as to the internal, which is effected by love; the rational, which is effected by truth; and the natural degree, which is from both. (See chap 1:8, Note.)
Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath;	Neither with those faculties which are now present in the mind only, does the Lord promise this conjunction and these blessings;
But with him that stands here with us this day before the LORD our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day:	But with those who are now capable of being united to the Lord, and also with those which are not at present developed in the soul:
(For you know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which you passed by;	For the regenerate know that they have been merely natural, without spiritual life, and how by the guidance of Divine truth they were led through the opposing evils of the unregenerate heart and passed by them;
And you have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them:)	And they have seen how abominable they are in the sight of heaven, their internal filthiness and defilement, and their simulated worship from evils of doctrine and falses of doctrine; in which the apparent truth leads to what is false both in doctrine and life, and the apparent good to what is evil both in doctrine and life:
Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turns away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood;	Lest there should be amongst you any thought, or affection, or evils derived from some falsity or false doctrine which should induce the will even in this regenerating state to turn from Divine good and truth to follow after those false principles which favour evil; lest in bringing forth the principles of the spiritual man into the natural life, evil should be mixed with good, or truth falsified, by the imagination that an evil life can be compatible with true religion;
And it come to pass, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:	And it comes to pass that when he who is regenerating hears from the Word the warning of the inevitable punishment which follows evil, that he flatters himself that all will be well with him, though he follows the leadings of his unregenerate will, thus from ignorance of truth accepting a manifestly absurd dogma as true doctrine, namely, that salvation is possible for any one who neglects the laws given to enable him to obtain salvation; or that anything can save or be put as a substitute for patiently working out and doing the commandments of the Lord:
The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven.	Those who commit sin cannot be unpunished. The Lord's protection of those in heaven and zeal for the salvation of all will appear as anger against the sinner; he will bring upon himself all the evils which are described in this book, and he will be removed from the number of those who are saved and regenerate.
And the LORD shall separate him to evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law:	And the Lord's mercy for others will require that that man or that evil principle be separated from the Church, or from the soul on account of the evils which it would bring, by preventing conjunction of others or other faculties of the soul with the Lord, as written in this book of God's holy law:
So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD has laid upon it;	So that the principles derived from your present conduct which will succeed in future states, and the rationality derived from natural lumen alone having little in common with the true principles of the Church, shall inquire, when the vastation of the good and truth derived from regeneration, and the irruption of evil into the interiors of the soul is perceived;
And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor bears, nor any grass grows therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:	And that all good affections and right principles are destroyed, and that all love of good in the internal will is extinct; that no truths are learned there, nor is there any acknowledgement of them in faith or action, nor do any true scientifics grow therein by which the truth of faith can come; but the whole soul is one mass of evil and falsity from the loves of self and the world, and from a false external worship in which these principles rule, which cannot but be dissipated when genuine good and truth flow in from the Lord:
Even all nations shall say, Wherefore has the LORD done thus to this land? what means the heat of this great anger?	Then shall even those principles in the soul which are merely external inquire, Why do all these evils come upon those things in the mind which were derived from the Church and revelation? and whence comes this great domination of the lust of evil? [Note.—Those principles in the mind which are capable of the highest perfection, become, if perverted, the most degraded.]
Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt:	And the internal dictate of conscience shall reply that it is because they have neglected to carry out the commandments of the Divine Love and Wisdom as given in former states to bring them to Himself, when the means of regeneration were placed before them to bring them out of a merely natural state.
For they went and served other gods, and worshiped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given to them:	For they left the true path of life to follow the falses which favoured their evil loves, and worshiped these as true doctrines, though they were opposed to the knowledges of the soul, and were not given by the Word.
And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book:	So that the soul (or the Church) rejected the influx from the Lord by which it might have been regenerated, and brought upon itself all the evils of which warning is given in this book:
And the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.	So that they entirely plucked themselves away from the Lord's Church, and can derive no nourishment thence (like a plant plucked up by the roots) by being adverse to its principles both in will and faith, and burn with the vehement lust of evil, and thus come into a fresh state in which they derive influx from hell.
The secret things belong to the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.	The way in which the goodness and wisdom of the Lord lead the soul by His Providence is secret and concealed for wise reasons; but this is clearly revealed in every state, and made patent to every rational principle in the mind, "If you would enter into life, keep the commandments" (Matt 19:17).