Heavenly love with its affections of good and truth and the perceptions
from them, together with the enjoyments of such affections and the
thoughts from these, may be compared to a tree, notable for its branches,
leaves and fruit. The life's love is the tree; the branches with their
leaves are the affections of good and truth with their perceptions; and
the fruits are the enjoyments of the affections with their thoughts.
Infernal love, however, with its affections or lusts of evil and falsity,
together with the enjoyments of the lusts and the thinking from those
enjoyments, may be compared to a spider and the web spun about it. The
love itself is the spider; the lusts of evil and falsity together with
their subtle cunning are the net of threads nearest the spider's post;
and the enjoyments of the lusts together with their crafty schemes are
the more remote threads where flies are snared on the wing, enveloped
and eaten.
108. These comparisons may help one to see the connection of all things
of the will and understanding or of man's mind with his life's love, and
yet not to see it rationally. Rationally it may be seen in this way.
Everywhere there are three which make one, called end, cause and effect.
Here the life's love is end; the affections with their perceptions are
cause; and the enjoyments of the affections and consequent thoughts are
effect. For as an end passes into effect through a cause, love passes by
its affections to its enjoyments and by its perceptions to its thoughts.
The effects are in the enjoyments of the mind and the thoughts thence
when the enjoyments are from the will and the thoughts from the attendant
understanding, that is, when all fully agree. The effects are then part
of man's spirit and although they do not come into bodily act are still a
deed there when there is this agreement. At the same time they are in the
body, dwelling there with man's life's love and longing for the deed,
which occurs when nothing hinders. The same is true of lusts of evil and
evil deeds with those who make evils allowable in spirit.
[2] As an end unites itself with a cause and by the cause with an effect,
the life's love unites itself with the internal of thought and by this
with its external. It is plain then that man's external of thought is in
itself what his internal is, for an end imparts all of itself to the
cause and through the cause to the effect. Nothing essential is present
in an effect which is not in the cause and through the cause in the end,
and as the end is what essentially enters cause and effect, these are
called "mediate end" and "final end" respectively.
109. Sometimes the external of thought seems to be different in itself
from the internal. This is because the life's love with its internals
about it sets a vicar under it called the love of means, and directs it
to watch and guard against anything of its lusts appearing. This vicar,
with the cunning of its chief, the life's love, therefore speaks and acts
in accordance with the laws of a kingdom, the ethical demands of reason,
and the spiritual requirements of the church, so cunningly, too, and
cleverly that no one sees that persons are other than they say and act,
and finally the persons themselves, so disguised, scarcely know
otherwise. Such are all hypocrites. Such are priests, also, who at heart
care nothing for the neighbor and do not fear God, yet preach about love
of the neighbor and of God. Such are judges who judge by gifts and
friendships while affecting zeal for justice and speaking with reason
about judgment. Such are traders who at heart are insincere and
fraudulent while dealing honestly for the sake of profit. Such are
adulterers when, from the rationality every man possesses, they talk
about the chastity of marriage; and so on.
[2] The same persons, when they strip the love of means, the vicar of
their life's love, of the purple and linen which they have thrown around
it and put its house dress on it, then think exactly the contrary, and
exchanging thought with their best friends who are in a similar life's
love, they speak so. It may be believed that when they have spoken so
justly, honestly and piously from the love of means, the character of the
internal of thought was not in the external of their thought; yet it was;
hypocrisy is in them, and love of self and the world is in them, the
cunning of which aims to capture a reputation for the sake of standing or
gain through just the outward appearance. This, the nature of the
internal, is in the external of their thought when they speak and act so.
110. With those in a heavenly love, however, internal and external of
thought or internal and external man make one when they speak, and they
are aware of no difference. Their life's love, with its affections of
good and the perceptions of truth from these, is like a soul in what they
think and then say and do. If they are priests, they preach out of love
to the neighbor and to the Lord; if judges, they judge from justice
itself; if tradesmen, they deal with honesty; if they are husbands, they
love the partner with true chastity; and so on. Their life's love also
has a love of the means for vicar, which it teaches and leads to act with
prudence and clothes with garments of a zeal for both truths of doctrine
and goods of life.
111. ( iii) _The internal cannot be purified from the lusts of evil as
long as evils in the external man are not removed, for these impede._
This follows from what has been said above, that the external of man's
thought is in itself what the internal of his thought is and that they
cohere as what is not only in the other but also from the other; one
cannot be removed, therefore, unless the other is at the same time. This
is true of any external which is from an internal, and of anything
subsequent from what is prior, and of every effect from a cause.
[2] As lusts together with slynesses make the internal of thought with
evil persons, and the enjoyments of the lusts together with scheming make
the external of thought in them, and the two are joined into one, it
follows that the internal cannot be purified from the lusts as long as
the evils in the external man are not removed. It should be known that
man's internal will is in the lusts; his internal understanding in the
slynesses; his external will in the enjoyments of the lusts; and his
external understanding in the sly scheming. Anyone can see that lusts and
their enjoyments make one, that slynesses and scheming also do, and that
the four are one series and as it were make a single bundle. From this
again it is evident that the internal, consisting of lusts, cannot be
cast out except on the removal of the external, consisting of evils.
Lusts produce evils by their enjoyments, and when evils are deemed
allowable, as they are when will and understanding agree on it, the
enjoyments and the evils make one. It is well known that assent is deed;
this is also what the Lord said:
If anyone looks on the woman of another to lust after her, he has already
committed adultery with her in his heart (Mt 5:28).*
The same is true of all other evils.
* The Greek is simply "on a woman" and does not have the word here
rendered "of another." Though Swedenborg quotes the verse several times
in his works he seems not to have checked as he usually did beyond the
rendering of the Schmidius Latin Bible which he used.
112. From this it may now be evident that for a person to be purified
from the lusts of evil, evils must by all means be removed from the
external man, for the lusts have no way out before. If no outlet exists,
they remain within and breathe out enjoyments and so incite man to
consent, thus to deed. Lusts enter the body by the external of thought;
when there is consent, therefore, in the external of thought they are
instantly in the body; the enjoyment felt is bodily. See in the treatise
_Divine Love and Wisdom_ (nn. 362-370) that the body, thus the whole man,
is what the mind is. This can be illustrated by comparisons, and by
examples.
[2] By _comparisons:_ lusts with their enjoyments can be compared to a
fire which blazes the more, the more it is nursed; the freer its way the
more widely it spreads until in a city it consumes houses and in a woods
the trees. In the Word, moreover, lusts are compared to fire, and the
evils from them to a conflagration. The lusts of evil with their
enjoyments also appear as fires in the spiritual world; hellfire is
nothing else. Lusts may also be compared to floods and inundations as
dikes or dams give way. They may also be likened to gangrene and
abscesses which bring death to the body as they run their course or are
not healed.
[3] By _examples:_ it is obvious that when evils are not removed in the
external man, the lusts with their enjoyments grow and flourish. The more
he steals the more a thief lusts to steal until he cannot stop; so with a
defrauder, the more he defrauds; it is the same with hatred and
vengeance, luxury and intemperance, whoredom and blasphemy. It is
notorious that the love of ruling from the love of self increases when
left unbridled; so also the love of possessing things from love of the
world; they seem to have no limit or end. Plain it is then that so far as
evils are not removed in the external man, lusts for them intensify; also
that in the degree that evils are given free rein, the lusts increase.
113. A person does not see the lusts of his evil; he sees their
enjoyments, to be sure, but still he reflects little on them, for they
divert thought and drive off reflection. Unless he learned from elsewhere
that they are evils he would call them goods and give them expression
freely according to his thought's reasoning; doing so, he appropriates
them to himself. So far as he confirms them as allowable he enlarges the
court of his ruling love, which is his life's love. Lusts constitute its
court, being its ministers and retinue, as it were, by which it governs
the exteriors of its realm. But such as is the king, such are the
ministers and retinue, and such is the kingdom. If the king is diabolic,
his ministers and the retinue are insanities, and the people of his realm
are falsities of every kind. The ministers (who are called wise although
they are insane) cause these falsities to appear as truths by reasonings
from fallacies and by fantasies and cause them to be acknowledged as
truths. Can such a state in a man be changed except by the evils being
removed in the external man? Then the lusts which cling to the evils are
also removed. Otherwise no outlet offers for the lusts; they are shut in
like a besieged city or like an indurated ulcer.
114. (iv) _Only with man's participation can evils in the external man be
removed by the Lord._ In all Christian churches it is an accepted point
of doctrine that before coming to the Holy Communion a person should
examine himself, see and confess his sins, and do penitence, desisting
from his sins and rejecting them because they are from the devil; and
that otherwise the sins are not forgiven him and he is damned. The
English, despite the fact that they are in the doctrine of faith alone,
nevertheless in the exhortation to the Holy Communion openly teach
self-examination, acknowledgment, confession of sins, penitence and
renewal of life, and warn those who do not do these things with the words
that otherwise the devil will enter into them as he did into Judas, fill
them with all iniquity, and destroy both body and soul. Germans, Swedes
and Danes, who are also in the doctrine of faith alone, teach the same in
the exhortation to the Holy Communion, also warning that otherwise the
communicants will make themselves liable to infernal punishments and
eternal damnation for mixing sacred and profane together. These words are
read out by the priest in a deep voice to all who are about to observe
the Holy Supper, and are listened to by them in full acknowledgment that
they are true.
[2] Nevertheless, after hearing a sermon on the same day about faith
alone and to the effect that the law does not condemn them because the
Lord has fulfilled it for them, and that of themselves they cannot do any
good which is not self-righteous and thus that one's works have nothing
saving in them, only faith alone has, these same persons return home
completely forgetting their earlier confession and rejecting it so far as
they think along the lines of the sermon. But which is true, the latter
or the former? Contrary to each other, both cannot be true. Which is?
That there can be no forgiveness of sins, thus no salvation but only
eternal damnation, apart from self-examination, the knowledge and
acknowledgment, confession and breaking off of sins, that is, apart from
repentance? Or that such things effect nothing towards salvation inasmuch
as full satisfaction for all the sins of men has been made by the Lord
through the passion of the cross for those who have faith, and that those
in faith alone with trust that it is so and with confidence in the
imputation of the Lord's merit, are sinless and appear before God like
men with shining faces for having washed?
[3] It is plain from this that the religion common to all churches in
Christendom is that one shall examine himself, see and acknowledge his
sins and then desist from them, and that otherwise there is no salvation,
but damnation. This, moreover, is divine truth itself, as is plain from
passages in the Word in which man is bidden to do penitence, as from the
following:
John said, Do . . . fruits worthy of repentance . . . this moment the axe
is at the root of the tree; every tree not giving good fruit will be cut
down and cast into the fire (Lu 3:8, 9).
Jesus said, Unless you do repentance, you shall all . . . perish
(Lu 13:3,5).
Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom of God; . . . do repentance, and
believe the gospel (Mk 1:14, 15).
Jesus sent out the disciples who on going out were to preach that men
should repent (Mk 6:12).
Jesus told the apostles that they were to preach repentance and the
remission of sins to all peoples (Lu 24:27).
John preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins (Mk
1:4; Lu 3:3).
Think about this also with some degree of understanding; if you have
religion, you will see that repentance of one's sins is the way to
heaven, that faith apart from repentance is not faith, and that those in
no faith for lack of repenting are in the way to hell.
115. Those in faith severed from charity who have confirmed themselves in
it by Paul's saying to the Romans that a man is justified by faith
without the works of the law (3:28) worship that saying quite like men
who worship the sun. They become like those who fix their gaze steadily
on the sun with the result that the blurred vision sees nothing in normal
light. For they fail to see what is meant in the passage by "works of the
law," namely, the rituals described by Moses in his books, called "law"
in them everywhere, and not the precepts of the Decalog. Lest it be
thought these are meant, Paul explains, saying at that point,
Do we not then make the law void through faith? Far from it, rather we
establish the law (verse 31 of the same chapter).
Those who have confirmed themselves by that saying in faith severed from
charity, looking on it as on the sun, do not see the passages in which
Paul lists the laws of faith and that these are the very works of
charity. What indeed is faith without its laws? Nor do they see the
passages in which he lists evil works, declaring that those who do them
cannot enter heaven. What blindness has been brought about by this one
passage badly understood!
116. Evils in the external man cannot be removed without man's
cooperation for the reason that it is by divine providence that whatever
a man hears, sees, thinks, wills, speaks and does shall seem to him to be
his own doing. Apart from that appearance (as was shown above, nn. 71-95
ff.) there would be no reception of divine truth on man's part, nor
determination to do what is good, nor any appropriation of love and
wisdom or of charity and faith, hence no conjunction with the Lord, no
reformation therefore or regeneration, and thus no salvation. Without
that appearance, repentance for sins would clearly be impossible and in
fact faith would; without that appearance, likewise, man is not man but
is devoid of rational life like the beasts. Let him who will, consult his
reason whether it appears otherwise than that man thinks from himself
about good and truth, spiritual as well as moral and civil; then accept
the doctrine that all good and truth are from the Lord and none from man.
Must he not then acknowledge as a consequence that man is to do good and
think truth of himself, yet always acknowledge that these are from the
Lord? And acknowledge further that man is to remove evils of himself, but
still acknowledge that he does so from the Lord?
117. Many are unaware that they are in evils since they do not do them
outwardly, fearing the civil law and the loss of reputation. Thus by
custom and habit they practice to avoid evils as detrimental to their
standing and interests. But if they do not shun evils on religious
principle, because they are sins and against God, the lusts of evil with
their enjoyments remain in them like impure waters stopped up or
stagnant. Let them probe their thoughts and intentions and they will come
on the lusts provided they know what sins are.
[2] Many such, who have confirmed themselves in faith separated from
charity and who believe that the law does not condemn, pay no attention
to sins. Some doubt there are sins, or if so, that they exist in God's
sight, having been pardoned. Such also are natural moralists, who believe
that civil and moral life with its prudence accomplishes all things and
divine providence nothing. Such are those, also, who strive with great
care after a reputation and a name for honesty and sincerity for the sake
of standing and preferment. But those who are such and who at the same
time have spurned religion become lustful spirits after death, appearing
to themselves like men indeed, but to others at a distance like _priapi;_
and they see in the dark and not at all in the light, like night-owls.
118. Proposition v, that _a man ought to remove evils from the external
man of himself,_ is substantiated then. Further explanation may be seen
in _Doctrine of Life for the New Jerusalem_ under three propositions: 1.
No one can flee evils as sins so as to be averse to them inwardly except
by combats against them (nn. 92-100); 2. A man ought to shun evils as
sins and fight against them as of himself (nn. 101-107); and 3. If he
shuns evils for any other reason than that they are sins, he does not
shun them, but only keeps them from appearing to the world.
119. (vi) _The Lord then purifies man from the lusts of evil in the
internal man and from the evils themselves in the external._ The Lord
purifies man from the lusts of evil only when man as of himself removes
the evils because He cannot do so before. For the evils are in the
external man and the lusts in the internal man, and they cling together
like roots and a trunk. Unless the evils are removed, therefore, no
outlet offers; they block the way and shut the door, which the Lord can
open only with a man's participation, as was shown just above. When the
man as of himself opens the door, the Lord then roots out the lusts.
[2] A second reason why the Lord cannot do so sooner is that He acts upon
man's inmost and by that on all that follows even to outmosts where man
himself is. While outmosts, therefore, are kept closed by man, no
purification can take place, but only that activity of the Lord in
interiors which is His activity in hell, of which the man who is in lusts
and at the same time in evils is a form--an activity which is solely
provision lest one thing destroy another and lest good and truth be
violated. It is plain from words of the Lord in the Apocalypse that He
constantly urges and prompts man to open the door to Him:
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if anyone hears my voice and
opens the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with Me
(3:20).
120. Man knows nothing at all of the interior state of his mind or
internal man, yet infinite things are there, not one of which comes to
his knowledge. His internal of thought or internal man is his very
spirit, and in it are things as infinite and innumerable as there are in
his body, in fact, more numerous. For his spirit is man in its form, and
all things in it correspond to all things of his body. Now, just as man
knows nothing by any sensation about how his mind or soul operates on all
things of the body as a whole or severally, so he does not know, either,
how the Lord works on all things of his mind or soul, that is, of his
spirit. The divine activity is unceasing; man has no part in it; still
the Lord cannot purify a man from any lust of evil in his spirit or
internal man as long as the man keeps the external closed. Man keeps his
external closed by evils, each of which seems to him to be a single
entity, although in each are infinite things. When a man removes what
seems a single thing, the Lord removes infinite things in it. So much is
implied in the Lord's purifying man from the lusts of evil in the
internal man and from the evils themselves in the external.
121. Many believe that a person is purified from evils merely by
believing what the church teaches; some, by doing good; others by
knowing, speaking and teaching what is of the church; others by reading
the Word and books of devotion; others by going to church, hearing
sermons and especially by observing the Holy Supper; still others, by
renouncing the world and devoting oneself to piety; others still by
confessing oneself guilty of all sins; and so on. And yet none of these
things purifies man at all unless he examines himself, sees his sins,
acknowledges them, condemns himself on account of them, and repents by
desisting from them, and does all this as of himself, yet with the
acknowledgment in heart that he does so from the Lord.
[2] Until this is done, the things mentioned above do not avail, being
either self-righteous or hypocritical. Such persons appear to the angels
in heaven either like pretty courtesans smelling badly of their
corruption, or like unsightly women painted to appear handsome, or like
masked clowns and mimics in the theater, or like apes in men's clothes.
But when evils have been removed, then all that has just been mentioned
becomes the expression of love in such persons, and they appear as
beautiful human beings to the sight of the angels in heaven and as
partners and companions of theirs.
122. But it should be rightly known that in repenting a man ought to look
to the Lord alone. He cannot be purified if he looks to God the Father
alone, or to the Father for the sake of the Son, or to the Son as a man
only. For there is one God and the Lord is He, for His Divine and Human
is one Person, as we have shown in _Doctrine of the New Jerusalem about
the Lord._ In order that the intending penitent may look to Him alone,
the Lord instituted the Holy Supper, which confirms the remission of sins
in those who repent, and does so because everyone is kept looking to the
Lord alone in it.