325. VIII. THAT THE STATE OF A WIDOW IS MORE GRIEVOUS THAN THAT OF A WIDOWER. The causes of this are external and internal. The external are clear to every one, namely: 1. That a widow cannot provide the necessities of life for herself and her household, nor make disposition of them when acquired, as a man can and as she previously did by and with her husband. 2. That she cannot protect herself and her home in the way needed; for when she was a wife, the husband was her defense and, as it were, her arm, and when she was her own defense, she yet relied on her husband. 3. That of herself she is lacking in judgment as regards such things as are matters of interior wisdom and hence of prudence. 4. That a widow has no one to receive the love in which she is as a woman, and so is in a state alien to that which is innate, and to that induced by marriage.
[2] These external causes which are natural, take their origin from internal causes which are spiritual, as do all other things in the world and in the body, concerning which, see above (no. 220). The above-mentioned external natural causes are perceived from the internal spiritual causes which proceed from the marriage of good and truth, and chiefly from the following characteristics of that marriage: [1] That good cannot provide for or regulate anything save by truth. [2] That good cannot protect itself save by truth, and that truth, therefore, is the defense and, as it were, the arm of good. [3] That good without truth is lacking in deliberation, for it has deliberation, wisdom and prudence by means of truth.
[3] Now because from creation a man is truth, and by creation a wife is the good thereof; or, what is the same thing, because from creation a man is understanding, and by creation a wife is the love thereof, it is clear that the external or natural causes which aggravate the widowhood of a woman take their rise from internal or spiritual causes. These spiritual causes conjoined with the natural are what are meant by what is said concerning widows in many places in the word, as may be seen in THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED, no. 764.
