Cain killed his brother Abel. God did not withhold him at the time by speaking to him, but only after the deed cursed him. Since by Adam and his wife is meant the Most Ancient Church,, so by Cain and Abel are meant the two essentials of the Church, which are love and wisdom, or charity and faith. By Abel is meant love and charity and by Cain wisdom or faith, in particular, wisdom separated from love, or faith separated from charity; and wisdom as well as faith when separated is such that it not only rejects love and charity, but even destroys them and thus kills its own brother.
The Curse of Cain involves the spiritual state into which those come after death. They separate faith from charity or wisdom from love. Yet in order that wisdom or faith might not therefore perish, a mark was set upon Cain lest he should be slain, for love cannot exist without wisdom, nor can charity without faith. As almost the same thing is represented by these things as by the eating of the tree of knowledge, therefore this story comes next in order after the description of Adam and his wife. Moreover, those who are in faith separated from charity are in their own intelligence; while those who are in charity and consequently in faith are in intelligence from the Lord, and thus in the Divine Providence.
….. Many kings after Solomon were permitted to profane the temple and the holy things of the Church. This was because the people represented the Church and the king was their head. The nation of Israel was such that they could not represent the Church for long as they were idolaters at heart, therefore they gradually departed from representative worship by perverting all things of the Church till at length it was devastated. This was represented by the profanations of the temple by the kings and by their idolatries. The actual devastation of their Church was represented by the destruction of the temple itself and by the carrying away of the people of Israel and by the captivity of the people of Judah in Babylon. Such was the cause of this permission; and whatever is done from any cause is done from the Divine Providence according to one of its laws.
DIVINE PERMISSION
Every worshipper of himself and of nature confirms himself against the Divine Providence when he sees in the world so many wicked people, and so many of their impieties in which some of them even glory, and yet no punishment of such by God. All impieties and also the glorying in them are permissions, the causes of which are laws of the Divine Providence. Every man may freely, indeed very freely, think what he will, both against God and in favour of God. He who thinks against God is rarely punished in the natural world, because there he is always in a state subject to reformation; but he is punished in the spiritual world after death, for then he can no longer be reformed.
Laws of Divine Providence:
- Man should act from freedom according to reason, a law treated of above
- Man should not be compelled by external means to think and will, and thus to believe and love, the things of religion, but should persuade and at times compel himself to do so
- There is no such thing as man’s prudence: it only appears that there is, and there ought to be this appearance; but the Divine Providence is universal because it is in things most individual
- Divine Providence regards eternal things, and not temporal things except so far as they accord with eternal things
- Man is admitted interiorly into the truths of faith and into the goods of charity only so far as he can be kept in them right on to the end of life,
- Evils are permitted for the sake of the end, which is salvation;
- Divine Providence is continual both with the wicked and with the good
- The Lord cannot act contrary to the laws of His Divine Providence, because to act contrary to them would be to act contrary to His Divine Love and Wisdom, and thus contrary to Himself
If these laws are considered together they may make manifest the reasons why impieties are permitted by the Lord, and are not punished when they exist in thought only, and seldom also when they exist in intention and thus also in the will and not in act. Yet its own punishment follows every evil; it is as if its punishment were inscribed upon the evil, and this punishment the wicked man suffers after death.
The worshipper of himself and of nature confirms himself against the Divine Providence still more when he sees that wicked designs, cunning devices and deceit are successful even against the pious, the righteous and the sincere, and that injustice triumphs over justice in the courts and in business. All the laws of the Divine Providence are necessities; and as they are the causes why such things are permitted it is clear that for man to be able to live as man, to be reformed and saved, these things can be removed from him by the Lord only by means. They are removed by means of the Word, and especially by the commandments of the Decalogue in the case of those who acknowledge all kinds of murder, adultery, theft and false witness as sins.
In the case of those who do not acknowledge such things as sins, they are removed by means of the civil laws and fear of their penalties, and also by means of moral laws, and the fear of the loss of reputation and consequent loss of honour and wealth; and it is by these means that the Lord leads the wicked, but only away from doing such things and not from thinking and willing them. However, by the former means the Lord leads the good, not only away from doing these things but also from thinking and willing them.
cainE Swedenborg
So now you see that there is no righteous rulers to stop them, so the evil runs rampant and, as in the days of Noah, evil swamps the world. ~ dr o