2660. What excrement portrays in spiritual things
Filthy and foul spiritual things are excrement. The ground being fertilized by excrement therefore portrays that they who confess their filthy sins and acknowledge that they are manure, are the kind of ground from which the seed sprouts up. Likewise in the other life, when filthy pleasures such as those of adultery and cruelty rot, and become stinking like manure, so that they begin to abhor them, then they are like a soil in which the propensity for goodness can be sown. This I saw by a spiritual mental image, and spoke of it with spirits, for they had wanted earlier to know what excrement portrays. 1748, 21 July.
2660. WHAT IS REPRESENTED IN SPIRITUAL THINGS BY ORDURE.
Ordure is spiritual, filthy and loathsome things. Inasmuch as fertility is produced in the earth by ordure, hence, is the representation, that [in them] who confess filthy sins, and acknowledge, that they are dung, there grows up the seed in such an earth. Likewise in the other life, when filthy pleasantnesses, like those of adultery and cruelty grow rotten, and become like fetid dung, so that they begin to abhor these things, then these [spirits] [ii] are as it were soil [humus] wherein a faculty of good may be inseminated. I have seen this in spiritual idea - and have spoken [concerning it] with spirits: for they have previously wished to know what [is meant by] the representation of ordure. - 1748, July 21.
2660. Quid fimus repraesentat in spiritualibus 1
Fimus sunt spiritualia spurca et foeda; quod ex fimo terra foecundetur, inde repraesentatio, quod qui confitentur spurca peccata, et agnoscunt, quod stercora sint, quod tunc semen in tali terra enascatur: similiter in altera vita, dum jucunditates spurcae, ut adulterii et crudelitatis putrescunt, et fiunt foetida sicut stercora, ut abominari ea incipiant, tunc ii sunt quasi humus, cui inseminari boni facultas potest: hoc idea spirituali vidi, et cum spiritibus loquutus sum; nam scire voluerunt prius quae fimi repraesentatio. 1748, 21 Julius.
Footnotes:
1. titulus hic non ut alii sublineatus in the Manuscript