e from Himself, from which he rushes headlong into an origin of
nature from herself; and from this idea he can be extricated only by a
spiritual or angelic idea of eternity, which is an idea apart from time;
and when time is separated, the Eternal and the Divine are the same, and
the Divine is the Divine in itself, not from itself. The angels declare
that while they can conceive of God from eternity, they can in no way
conceive of nature from eternity, still less of nature from herself and
not at all of nature as nature in herself. For that which is in itself
is the very Esse, from which all things are; Esse in itself is very life,
which is the Divine Love of Divine Wisdom and the Divine Wisdom of Divine
Love. For the angels this is the Eternal, an Eternal as removed from time
as the uncreated is from the created, or the infinite from the finite,
between which, in fact, there is no ratio.

77. THE DIVINE IN THINGS GREATEST AND LEAST IS THE SAME.

This follows from the two preceding articles, that the Divine apart from
space is in all space, and apart from time is in all time. Moreover, there
are spaces greater and greatest, and lesser and least; and since spaces
and times, as said above, make one, it is the same with times. In these
the Divine is the same, because the Divine is not varying and changeable,
as everything is which belongs to nature, but is unvarying and
unchangeable, consequently the same everywhere and always.

78. It seems as if the Divine were not the same in one person as in
another; as if, for instance, it were different in the wise and in the
simple, or in an old man and in a child. But this is a fallacy arising
from appearance; the man is different, but the Divine in him is not
different. Man is a recipient, and the recipient or receptacle is what
varies. A wise man is a recipient of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom more
adequately, and therefore more fully, than a simple man; and an old man
who is also wise, more than a little child or boy; yet the Divine is the
same in the one as in the other. It is in like manner a fallacy arising
from appearance, that the Divine is different with angels of heaven from
what it is with men on the earth, because the angels of heaven are in
wisdom ineffable, while men are not; but the seeming difference is not
in the Lord but in the subjects, according to the quality of their
reception of the Divine.

79. That the Divine is the same in things greatest and least, may