Selection from Divine Providence ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
The Lord's Divine providence is universal from the minutest particulars, in that He created the universe that an infinite and eternal creation from Himself might exist in it; and this creation exists by the Lord's forming a heaven out of men to be before Him as one man, which is His image and likeness.- • This heaven formed out of men is such in the Lord's sight, and that this was the end of creation.
- • The Divine in all that it does, looks to the infinite and eternal.
Who that knows and believes from the doctrine of the church that God is infinite and eternal (for it is in the doctrine of all the churches in the Christian world that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, is infinite, eternal, uncreated, and omnipotent, as may be seen in the Athanasian creed), can be so devoid of reason as not to admit as soon as he hears it that God cannot do otherwise than look to what is infinite and eternal in the great work of His creation? For what else can He look to when He looks from Himself? This also He looks to in the human race, from which He forms that heaven which is His own. What else, then, can the Divine providence have for its end than the reformation and salvation of the human race? But no one can be reformed by himself by means of his own prudence, but only by the Lord by means of His Divine providence. Thus it follows that unless man were led every moment and fraction of a moment by the Lord, he would depart from the way of reformation and would perish.
Every change and variation of the state of the human mind produces some change and variation in the series of things present, and consequently in the things that follow; why not then progressively to eternity? It is like an arrow shot from a bow, which, if it should depart in the least at its start from the line of aim, would at a distance of a thousand paces or more go far wide of the mark. So would it be if the Lord did not lead the states of human minds every least moment. This the Lord does in accordance with the laws of His Divine providence; and it is in accordance with these laws that it should appear to man that he leads himself; while how he leads himself is foreseen by the Lord with an unceasing adaptation. That laws of permission are also laws of the Divine providence, and that every man can be reformed and regenerated, and that there is no other possible predestination, will be seen in what follows.
Since, therefore, every man lives for ever after death, and is allotted a place according to his life, either in heaven or in hell, and since both heaven and hell must exist in a form that will act as a one, as said before, and since no one can be allotted in that form any place but his own, it follows that the human race throughout the whole world is under the Lord's auspices; and that each one, from infancy even to the end of his life, is led by the Lord in the least particulars, and his place foreseen and at the same time provided.
From all this it is clear that the Lord's Divine providence is universal because it is in every least particular; and that this is the infinite and eternal creation which the Lord provided for Himself by means of the creation of the universe. Of this universal providence man sees nothing. If he did see it it would appear in his eyes only as one passing sees scattered heaps and accumulated material from which a house is to be built, while the Lord sees it as a magnificent palace, with its work of construction and enlargement constantly going on.
(from Divine Providence 202-203)