me into the thought, does not
come into faith. The reason of this is that the man who shuns and turns
away from evils as sins thinks from heaven; and the whole heaven, and
everyone there, has no other idea of God than that He is a Man; nor can
he have any other idea, since the whole heaven is a man in the largest
form, and the Divine that goes forth from the Lord is what makes heaven;
consequently to think otherwise of God than according to that Divine
form, which is the human form, is impossible to angles, since angelic
thoughts pervade heaven.

(That the whole heaven in the complex answers to a single man may be
seen in the work on Heaven and Hell, n. 51-86; and that the angels think
according to the form of heaven, n. 200-212.)

This idea of God flows in from heaven into all in the world, and has its
seat in their spirit; but it seems to be rooted out in those in the
church who are in intelligence from what is their own (proprium), indeed
so rooted out as to be no longer a possible idea; and this for the
reason that they think of God from space. But when these become spirits
they think otherwise, as has been made evident to me by much experience.
For in the spiritual world an indeterminate idea of God is no idea of
Him; consequently the idea there is determined to someone who has his
seat either on high or elsewhere, and who gives answers.

From a general influx which is from the spiritual world men have
received ideas of God as a Man variously according to the state of
perception; and for this reason the triune God is with us called
Persons; and in paintings in churches God the Father is represented as a
man, the Ancient of Days. It is also from a general influx that men,
both living and dead, who are called saints, are adored as gods by the
common people in Christian Gentilism, and their sculptured images are
esteemed. The same is true of many nations elsewhere, of the ancient
peoples in Greece, in Rome, and in Asia, who had many gods, all of whom
were regarded by them as men. This has been said to make known that
there is an intuition, namely, in man's spirit, to see God as a man.
That is called an intuition which is from general influx. (A.E., n.
955.)

As man from a general influx out of heaven sees in his spirit that God
is a Man, it follows that those who are of the church where the Word is,
if they shun and turn away from evils as sins, see, from the light of
heaven in which they then are, the Divine