faith, which is faith in many gods; ( 5 ) half-blind faith, which is faith in
some other god besides the true one, or among Christians, faith in some-
one else besides the Lord God our Savior; ( 6 ) hypocritical or pharisaical
faith, which is faith of the mouth but not of the heart; and ( 7 ) imaginary
and backwards faith, which presents falsity as truth and bolsters it with
clever argumentation.
As I said above, faith takes the form of spiritual sight in us. Since spir- 346
itual sight (the sight of the intellect and therefore the mind) and physical
sight (the sight of the eye and therefore the body) correspond to each
other, every state of faith is comparable to a state of the eye and its
sight. The states of true faith are comparable to all the healthy states of
eyesight. The states of false faith are comparable to all the unhealthy
states of eyesight.
Let us compare the correspondences of these two kinds of sight, the
mental and the physical, in each one’s unhealthy states. Illegitimate faith,
in which false beliefs have been mixed with true ones, is comparable to
the disease of the eye and therefore of eyesight called a white macula or
spot on the cornea, which obscures vision. Promiscuous faithbased on
truths that have been falsified and adulterous faithbased on good things
that have been contaminated are comparable to the eye disease and
visual problem called a cataract—a drying and hardening of the crys-
talline fluid [of the lens]. Closedor blind faith,which is a faith in mysti-
cal things that we believe in, although we do not know whether they are
true or false, beyond reason or contrary to it, is comparable to the eye
disease called gutta serenaor amaurosis—loss of sight because of blockage
of the optical nerve, although the eye still looks as though it is function-
ing and healthy. Wandering faith,which is faith in many gods, is compa-
rable to the disease of the eye that involves a loss of transparency in the
anterior chamber, that is, a loss of vision resulting from an obstruction
between the sclerotic tunic and the uvea. Half-blind faith,which is faith
in some other god besides the true one, or among Christians, faith in
someone else besides the Lord God our Savior, is comparable to the dis-
ease of the eye called strabismus. Hypocriticalor pharisaical faith,which
is faith of the mouth but not of the heart, is comparable to atrophy of
the eye that causes loss of sight. Imaginary and backwards faith,which
presents falsity as truth and bolsters it with clever argumentation, is
comparable to the disease of the eye called nyctalopia, or night blind-
ness, which is [poor] vision in the faint, deceptive light that occurs in the
nighttime.
§346 faith 415