74.  From the above it can be seen that time makes one with thought from affection; for from that is the quality of man’s state.  And with progressions of time, in the spiritual world, distances in progress through space coincide; as may be shown from many things.  For instance, in the spiritual world ways are actually shortened or are lengthened in accordance with the longings that are of thought from affection.  From this, also, comes the expression, “spaces of time.”  Moreover, in cases where thought does not join itself to its proper affection in man, as in sleep, the lapse of time is not noticed.

75.  Now as times which are proper to nature in its world are in the spiritual world pure states, which appear progressive because angels and spirits are finite, it may be seen that in God they are not progressive because He is Infinite, and infinite things in Him are one (as has been shown above, n. 17-22).  From this it follows that the Divine in all time is apart from time.

76.  He who has no knowledge of God apart from time and is unable from any perception to think of Him, is thus utterly unable to conceive of eternity in any other way than as an eternity of time; in which case, in thinking of God from eternity he must needs become bewildered; for he thinks with regard to a beginning, and beginning has exclusive reference to time.  His bewilderment arises from the idea that God had existence 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.