t follows it will be seen that although God
has created the universe and all things thereof out of Himself, yet there
is nothing whatever in the created universe that is God; and other things
besides, which will place this matter in its proper light.

284. Part First of this Work treated of God, that He is Divine Love and
Divine Wisdom; that He is life, and that He is substance and form, which
is the very and only Esse. Part Second treated of the spiritual sun and
its world, and of the natural sun and its world, and of the creation of
the universe with all things thereof from God by means of these two suns.
Part Third treated of degrees in which are each and all things that have
been created. Part Fourth will now treat of the creation of the universe
from God. All these subjects are now explained, because the angels have
lamented before the Lord, that when they look upon the world they see
nothing but darkness, and among men no knowledge of God, of heaven, or of
the creation of nature, for their wisdom to rest upon.

285. THE LORD FROM ETERNITY, THAT IS, JEHOVAH, COULD NOT HAVE CREATED
THE UNIVERSE AND ALL THINGS THEREOF UNLESS HE WERE A MAN.

Those who have a corporeal natural idea of God as a Man, are wholly unable
to comprehend how God as a Man could have created the universe and all
things thereof; for they think within themselves, How can God as a Man
wander all over the universe from space to space, and create? Or how can
He, from His place, speak the word, and as soon as it is spoken, creation
follow? When it is said that God is a Man, such ideas present themselves
to those whose conception of the God-Man is like their conception of a man
in the world, and who think of God from nature and its properties, which
are time and space. But those whose conception of God-Man is not drawn from
their conception of a man in the world, nor from nature and its space and
time, clearly perceive that unless God were a man the universe could not
have been created. Bring your thought into the angelic idea of God as
being a Man, putting away, as much as you can, the idea of space, and you
will come near in thought to the truth. In fact, some of the learned
have a perception of spirits and angels as not in space, because they have
a perception of the spiritual as apart from space. For the spiritual is
like thought, which although it is in man, man is nevertheless able by
means of it to be present as it were elsewhere, in any place h