April 23, 2018

When 'Self" is the Moving Cause

Selection from Arcana Cœlestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
No truth is holy unless it comes from good. A man may utter many truths from the Word, and thus from memory, but if it is not love or charity that brings them forth, nothing holy can be predicated of them. But if he has love and charity, then he acknowledges and believes, and this from the heart. And it is the same with faith, of which so many say that it alone saves: if there is no love or charity from which the faith comes, there is no faith.
Love and charity are what make faith holy.
The Lord is in love and charity, but not in faith that is separated from charity. In faith separated is the man himself, in whom there is nothing but uncleanness. For when faith is separated from love, his own praise, or his own advantage, is the moving cause that is in his heart, and from which he speaks. This everyone may know from his own experience. Whoever tells anyone that he loves him, that he prefers him to others, that he acknowledges him as the best of men, and the like, and yet in heart thinks otherwise, does this only with his mouth, and in heart denies, and sometimes makes sport of him. And it is the same with faith. ...

They who in the life of the body have preached the Lord and faith with so much eloquence, together with feigned devoutness, as to astonish their hearers, and have not done it from the heart, in the other life are among those who bear the greatest hatred toward the Lord, and who persecute the faithful.
(Arcana Cœlestia 724)