1 Thessalonians 5:8 The breastplate of faith and love

⁸ But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. -1 Thessalonians 5:8 King James Version (KJV)




Spiritual Diary, by Emanuel Swedenborg, [1758], tr. by Bush, Smithson and Buss [1883-9] at sacred-texts.com

4732.

A GOLDEN AND A SILVER HEART, AND SILVER SWORDS. Good spirits [are such] as have not yet become angels, because they cannot but often come in contact with evil spirits, who constantly attempt to produce evils. The number of such [evil spirits] is very great; and the evils which they produce are innumerable... Those who are good, and interiorly angels, have given to them a breast-plate, which is, as it were, a larger form of heart, made of gold. When the evil, or robbers, meet them, and they draw aside their garments and show the golden heart, the robbers dare not do anything. Those who confess the Lord, are given a breastplate of gold; but beforehand, while as yet they acknowledge Three Persons [as separate in the Godhead,] their breast-plate is of silver.