established, the church was turned into Babylon, and later into
Philistia. Babylon acknowledges the Word, to be sure, and yet esteems it
lightly, asserting that the Holy Spirit inspires its own highest judgment
just as much as it did the prophets. They acknowledge the Word for the
vicarship founded on the Lord's words to Peter, but esteem it lightly
because it does not accord with their teaching. It is therefore taken
from the people also and hidden in monasteries where few read it. If,
therefore, the spiritual sense of the Word had been revealed, in which
the Lord is present together with all angelic wisdom, the Word would have
been profaned not only, as it is now, in its lowermost expression in the
sense of the letter, but in its inmosts, too.

[3] Philistia, by which faith separated from charity is meant, would have
profaned the spiritual sense of the Word also, because, as we have shown
before, it puts salvation in certain formulas which are to be thought and
spoken, and not in good works which are to be done. It thus makes saving
what is not saving and also removes the understanding from what is to be
believed. What would they do with the light in which the spiritual sense
of the Word is? Would that not be turned into darkness? When the natural
sense is, why not the spiritual sense? Does any one of them who has
confirmed himself in faith separate from charity and in justification by
this faith alone, want to know what good of life is, what love to the
Lord and towards the neighbor is, what charity is and what the goods of
charity are, what good works are and what it is to do them, or in fact
what faith is essentially and what genuine truth is, constituting it?
They compose volumes, establish in them only what they call faith, and
declare that all the things just mentioned are present in that faith. It
is clear from this that if the spiritual sense of the Word had been
revealed earlier, it would come to pass according to the Lord's words in
Matthew: