Selections from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
Faith in the understanding or doctrine, which is the first thing of regeneration
The complex the truth of doctrine by which the good of life can be attained
The church which begins from faith would cease to be a church unless this Divine truth remained in it - that the Lord's Human is Divine, for this is the supreme or inmost truth of the church.
This supreme or inmost truth, that the Lord's Human is Divine, is denied by those in the church who are in faith alone; and yet because they know from the Word that in the Lord there is the Divine, and do not apprehend how the Human can be Divine, they therefore attribute both to the Lord, making a distinction between His Divine nature and His Human nature.
Those however who are in a life of faith, or in charity, adore the Lord as their God and Savior; and when in adoration, they think of the Lord's Divine without separating it from the Human, and thus at heart acknowledge all in the Lord to be Divine. But when they think from doctrine, because they likewise cannot comprehend how the Human can be Divine, they speak according to their doctrine.
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That acknowledgment and adoration of the Lord's Divine Human is the life of religion...
Men are of such a nature as to desire to worship that of which they can have some perception and thought, and sensuous men even that which they can perceive by some sense, nor are they willing to worship unless the Divine is therein. This is common to the human race.
For this reason Gentiles worship idols in which they believe there is the Divine, and others worship men after their death whom they believe to be either gods or saints. For nothing can be called forth in man unless there is something to affect his senses.
Those who say that they acknowledge a Supreme Being, of whom they have no idea of perception, for the most part acknowledge no God, but nature instead, because they comprehend this. Very many of the learned among Christians are such, and this also because they do not believe the Human of the Lord to be Divine.
Lest therefore men who have removed themselves so far from the Divine, and have become so far corporeal, should worship wood and stones; and lest they should worship some man after his death, and thus under him some devil, and not God Himself, because they could not in any way perceive Him, and thus everything of the church should perish, and with the church the human race, the Divine Itself willed to assume the Human and to make it Divine. Let the learned take heed therefore, lest they think of the Lord's Human and do not at the same time believe it to be Divine, for in so doing they make for themselves a stumbling block, and at last believe nothing.
(Arcana Coelestia 4731; 4733)