221.  Two arcana, which are brought within reach of the understanding by what precedes, may here be revealed.  The First Arcanum is that the Word is in its fullness and in its power in the sense of the letter.  For there are three senses in the Word, according to the three degrees; the celestial sense, the spiritual sense, and the natural sense.  Since these senses are in the Word according to the three degrees of height, and their conjunction is effected by correspondences, the outmost sense, which is the natural and is called the sense of the letter, is not only the complex, containant and base of the corresponding interior senses, but moreover in the outmost sense the Word is in its fullness and in its power.  This is abundantly shown and proved in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Concerning the Sacred Scripture (n. 27-35, 36-49, 50-61, 62-69).  The Second Arcanum is that the Lord came into the world, and took upon Him the Human, in order to put Himself into the power of subjugating the hells, and of reducing all things to order both in the heavens and on the earth.  This Human He put on over His former Human.  This Human which He put on in the world was like the human of a man in the world.  Yet both Humans are Divine, and therefore infinitely transcend the finite humans of angels and men.  And because He fully glorified the natural Human even to its outmosts, He rose again with the whole body, differently from any man.  Through the assumption of this Human the Lord put on Divine Omnipotence not only for subjugating the hells, and reducing the heavens to order, but also holding the hells in subjection to eternity, and saving mankind.  This power is meant by His “sitting at the right hand of the power and might of God.”  Because the Lord, by the assumption of a natural Human, made Himself Divine Truth in outmosts, He is called “the Word,” and it is said that “the Word was made flesh;” moreover, Divine Truth in outmosts is the Word in the sense of the letter.  This the Lord made Himself by fulfilling all things of the Word concerning Himself in Moses and the Prophets.  For while every man is his own good and his own truth, and man is man on no other ground, the Lord, by the assumption of a natural Human, is Divine Good itself and Divine Truth itself, or what is the same, He is Divine Love itself and Divine Wisdom itself, both in Firsts and in Lasts.  Consequently the Lord, since His advent into the world, appears as a sun in the angelic heavens, in stronger radiance and in greater splendor than before His advent.  This is an arcanum which is brought within the range of the understanding by the doctrine of degrees.  The Lord’s omnipotence before His advent into the world will be treated of in what follows.

222.  There are degrees of both kinds in the greatest and in the least of all created things.