In its inmosts the Sacred Scripture is no other than God, that is, the Divine which proceeds from God....  In its derivatives it is accommodated to the perception of angels and men.  In these it is Divine likewise, but in another form, in which this Divine is called “Celestial,” “Spiritual,” and “Natural.”  These are no other than coverings of God.  Still the Divine, which is inmost, and is covered with such things as are accommodated to the perceptions of angels and men, shines forth like light through crystalline forms, but variously, according to the state of mind which a man has formed for himself, either from God or from self.  In the sight of the man who has formed the state of his mind from God, the Sacred Scripture is like a mirror in which he sees God, each in his own way.  The truths which he learns from the Word and which become a part of him by a life according to them, compose that mirror.  The Sacred Scripture is the fulness of God.

—­True Christian Religion, n. 6

IN ITS BOSOM SPIRITUAL

The Word in its bosom is spiritual.  Descending from Jehovah the Lord, and passing through the angelic heavens, the Divine (in itself ineffable and imperceptible) became level with the perception of angels and finally the perception of man.  Hence the Word has a spiritual sense, which is within the natural, just as the soul is in the body, or as thought is in speech, or volition in action.

—­True Christian Religion, n. 193

THE LETTER OF THE WORD

The truths of the sense of the letter of the Word are in part appearances of truth, and are taken from things in nature, and thus accommodated and adapted to the grasp of the simple and also of little children.  But being correspondences, they are receptacles and abodes of genuine truth; and are like enclosing and containing vessels.  The naked truths themselves, which are enclosed and contained, are in the Word’s spiritual sense; and the naked goods in its celestial sense.

The doctrine of genuine truth can also be drawn in full from the literal sense of the Word; for the Word in this sense is like a man clothed, whose face and hands are bare.  All that concerns man’s life, and so his salvation, is bare; the rest is clothed.

—­Doctrine Concerning the Sacred Scripture, nn. 40, 55

ITS LANGUAGE

The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world; not only generally, but in detail.  Whatever comes forth in the natural world from the spiritual, is therefore called correspondent.  The world of nature comes forth and subsists from the spiritual world, just as an effect does from its efficient cause.

—­Heaven and Hell, n. 89

What is Divine presents itself in the world in what corresponds.  The Word is therefore written wholly in correspondence.  Therefore the Lord, too, speaking as He did from the Divine, spoke in correspondence.