How A Man Can Be In Enlightenment
as to learn the truths that must constitute his faith
and in such affection as to do the goods
that must constitute his love
thus
can know whether his faith is a belief in truth
and his love a love of good
Selection from
APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED
According to the spiritual sense
in which the arcana there predicted
but heretofore concealed
are revealed
A posthumous work
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the
sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and
upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as
the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon
gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly
wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they
worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to
make war with him?
5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and
blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two
months.
6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name,
and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.
7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome
them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
Revelation 13:1-7
And as "the
beast" signifies faith separated from the life, corroborated and established by
reasonings from the natural man, it follows that to such a faith domination is
given over all things of the church and its doctrine. It is evident that
domination was given to this faith, since faith alone is the universal
prevailing principle in the churches; for it has been taken to be the essential
means of salvation, as is clearly evident from the doctrines of the churches, as
well as from the verbal profession of the men of the church, and in general from
their lives; also from this, that they do not know what charity and love are,
consequently what works are. And as such is the domination of faith separate, so
it has domination over all the truths and goods of the church, and extinguishes
them by falsifying, perverting, and adulterating them; for where that faith
rules there is no longer anything good, and thence no truth.
It is known that
faith from love is the essential means of salvation, and thus is the principle
of the doctrine of the church; but since it is important to know how a man can
be in such enlightenment as to learn the truths that must constitute his faith
and in such affection as to do the goods that must constitute his love, and thus
can know whether his faith is a belief in truth and his love a love of good,
this shall be told in its proper order, as follows:
(1) Let him read the Word
every day, one or two chapters, and learn from a master and from preachings the
dogmas of his religion; and especially let him learn that God is one, and that
the Lord is the God of heaven and earth (John 3:35; 17:2; Matt. 11:27; 28:18),
that the Word is holy, that there is a heaven and a hell, and that there is a
life after death.
(2) Let him learn from the Word, from a master, and from preachings, what works are sins, and that they are especially adulteries,
thefts, murders, false witness, and the others mentioned in the Decalogue;
likewise that lascivious and obscene thoughts are also adulteries, that frauds
and illicit gains are also thefts, that hatred and revenge are also murders, and
that lies and blasphemies are also false witness; and so on. Let him learn all
these things from childhood to youth.
(3) When man begins to think for himself,
which is the case after he has grown up, it must be to him the first and chief
thing to refrain from doing evils for the reason that they are sins against the
Word, thus against God, and for the reason that if he does them he will gain,
not life eternal, but hell; and afterwards as he grows up and becomes old he
must shun them as damned, and must turn away from them in thought and intention. But in order to so refrain from them and shun and turn away from them, he must
pray to the Lord for help. The sins he must refrain from and must shun and turn
away from are chiefly adulteries, frauds, illicit gains, hatreds, revenges,
lies, blasphemies, and elation of mind.
(4) So far as man detests these evils
because they are opposed to the Word, and thence opposed to God, so far there is
granted him communication with the Lord, and conjunction is effected with
heaven. For the Lord enters, and with the Lord heaven enters, as sins are
removed; since these and their falsities are the sole hindrances. The reason is
because man has been placed in the midst between heaven and hell, wherefore hell
acts from the one side, and heaven from the other; therefore so far as evils
that are from hell are removed, so far goods from heaven enter; for the Lord
says:
Behold I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hear and open the door, I will
come in to him (Rev. 3:20).
But if man refrains from doing these evils for any other reason than because
they are sins, and are opposed to the Word and because thence to God, no
conjunction of heaven with him is effected, because his refraining is from self,
and not from the Lord. The Lord is in the Word, even so that He is called the
Word (John 1:1-4), because the Word is from Him; consequently the conjunction of
heaven with the man of the church is by means of the Word, as may be seen in the
work on Heaven and Hell (n. 303-310).
(5) So far, then, as man detests these
sins so far good affections enter. Then so far as he detests adulteries so far
chastity enters; so far as he detests frauds and unlawful gains so far sincerity
and justice enter; so far as he detests hatred and revenge so far charity
enters; so far as he detests lies and blasphemies so far truth enters; and so
far as he detests elation of mind so far humility before God and love of the
neighbor as oneself enter; and so on. From this it follows that to shun evils is
to do goods.
(6) So far as a man is in these good affections he is led by the
Lord and not by self; and so far as he acts from them so far he does what is
good, because he does this from the Lord and not from self; and then he acts
from chastity, from sincerity and justice, from charity, from truth, in humility
before God; and from these no one can act from self.
(7) The spiritual
affections that are granted by the Lord to him who is in them and who acts from
them, are the affection of knowing and understanding the truths and goods of
heaven and the church, together with the affection of willing and doing them;
also the affection of combating with zeal against falsities and evils and
dispersing them, both with himself and with others. From this man has faith and
love, and from this he has intelligence and wisdom.
(8) Thus and in no other way
is man reformed; and so far as he knows and believes truths, and wills and does
them, so far is he regenerated, and from natural becomes spiritual. The like is
true of his faith and his love.
If evils have not been removed because they are sins nothing that a man thinks, speaks, wills, and
does, is good or true before God, however it may appear as if good and true
before the world. The reason is that they are not from the Lord but from man,
since it is the love of the man and of the world from which they are, and which
is in them. Most people at this day believe that they will come into heaven if
they have faith, live piously, and do goods; and yet they do not turn away from
evils because they are sins, consequently they either do them or believe them to
be allowable; and those who believe them to be allowable do them when
opportunity is given. But let them know that their faith is not faith, that
their pious things are not pious, and that their goods are not goods; for they
flow from the impurities that lie inwardly concealed with man; and externals
derive everything that they are from internals. For the Lord says:
Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup and of the platter,
that the outside may become clean also (Matt. 23:26).
From this it can now be seen that if a man were able to fulfill all things of
the law, if he should give much to the poor, if he should do good to the
fatherless and the widow, and if he should also give bread to the hungry and
drink to the thirsty, take in the strangers, clothe the naked, visit the sick,
and go to them that are bound in prison, if he should earnestly preach the
Gospel, convert the Gentiles, frequent temples, listen devoutly to preachings,
observe the sacrament of the Supper often every year, spend his time in prayer,
and other things; and his internal has not been purified from hatred and
revenge, from craftiness and malice, from insincerity and injustice, from the
filthy delight of adultery, from the love of self and the consequent love of
rule, and the pride of self-intelligence, from contempt of others in comparison
with oneself, and from the other evils and their falsities; still all these
works would be hypocritical and from the man himself, and not from the Lord. And
yet these same works, when the internal has been purified, are all good, because
they are from the Lord with man, and since the man is in the faith and in the
love of doing these works he will do them as a matter of course. This has been
proved to me by a thousand examples in the spiritual world. I have there heard
that it has been granted to many to recall the actions of their life in the
world, and to enumerate the goods they had done; but when their internal was
opened it was found to be full of every evil and the falsity therefrom; and it
was then disclosed to them that the goods they had enumerated had been done from
self, because for the sake of self and the world, and that they were full of
evils from their interiors; and on this account they appeared either as if
scorched with fire, or as if sooty.
But it was otherwise with those who from the Word had abstained from doing
evils, and had afterwards shunned them and turned away from them because they
were sins and were opposed to love to God and to charity towards the neighbor. Although there was a similar perception to them that their works were done as if
from self, yet they were all good, and appeared in the light of heaven like
white snow and wool (Isaiah 1:12-18). These are the works that are meant in the
Word by the works that can in no wise be separated from faith; for faith
separated from them is dead, and a dead faith is a faith in falsity from an evil
love; or it is the thought that a thing is true, while the life is still evil.
That abstaining from evils for any reason whatever except from the Word does not
purify the internal man is evident from the origin of evil works and from the
origin of good works. For example, he that abstains from adulteries from fear of
the civil law and its punishments, from fear of the loss of reputation and thus
of honor, from fear of deprivations arising from poverty, parsimony, or avarice,
from fear of consequent illness, from fear of brawls at home with the wife and
the consequent intranquility of life, from fear of chastisement by the servants
of the injured husband, from infirmity arising from abuse, or age, or impotence,
or even from natural goodness and consequent moral goodness, that is, as not
being proper and honorable, and so on, and if for such reasons only he lives
chastely still he is interiorly unchaste and an adulterer, so long as he does
not abstain from these evils from spiritual faith, which is a belief that
adulteries are infernal because they are contrary to the Divine Law, and thus
contrary to the fear of God and to love of the neighbor. And so in all other
cases.
From what has now been presented it can be seen what the internal and the
external are, also what faith and love are, namely, that faith and love are with
man when his internal has been purified from evils in the manner just described,
and that they are not in him if it be not purified, and that where faith and
love are, there is heaven, and where faith and love are not, there is hell. More on this by
clicking on link: AE 825
(from Apocalypse Explained 803)
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