ssentials of the church: acknowledgment of the divine of the
Lord, acknowledgment of the holiness of the Word, and the life which is
called charity. Everyone's faith is according to the life which is
charity; from the Word he has a rational perception of what life should
be; and from the Lord he has reformation and salvation. Had these three
been regarded as the church's essentials, intellectual differences would
not have divided it but only varied it as light varies colors in
beautiful objects and as various insignia of royalty give beauty to a
king's crown.

260. _The merely natural man confirms himself against divine providence
in that Judaism still continues._ That is, after all these centuries the
Jews have not been converted although they live among Christians and do
not, in keeping with prophecies in the Word, confess the Lord and
acknowledge Him to be the Messiah, who, as they think, was to lead them
back to the land of Canaan; but they steadfastly persist in denying Him
and yet it is well with them. Those who take this view, however, and thus
call divine providence in question, do not know that by Jews in the Word
all who are of the church and acknowledge the Lord are meant, and by the
land of Canaan, into which it is said that they are to be led, the Lord's
church is meant.

[2] But the Jews persist in denying the Lord because they are such that,
if they received and acknowledged the divine of the Lord and the holy
things of His church, they would profane them. Therefore the Lord said of
them:

He has blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not
see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted,
and I should heal them (Jn 12:40; Mt 13:14; Mk 4:12; Lu 8:10; Isa 6:9,
10).

It is said, "lest they should be converted, and I should heal them"
because if they had been converted and healed they would have committed
profanation, and according to the law of divine providence treated above
(nn. 221-233) no one is admitted interiorly into truths of faith and
goods of charity by the Lord except so far as he can be kept in them to
the close of life; were he admitted, he would profane what is holy.

[3] This nation has been preserved and dispersed over much of the earth
for the sake of the Word in its original language, which they hold more
sacred than Christians do. The Lord's divine is in every particular of
the Word, for it is divine truth joined with divine good coming fro