Charity and Good Works (pt. 32)

Selection from True Christian Religion ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
Charity and Good Works (pt. 32)
v Doctrinal Series v

X. THERE ARE DUTIES OF CHARITY, SOME PUBLIC, SOME DOMESTIC, AND SOME PRIVATE

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The public duties of charity are especially the payment of tribute and taxes, which ought not to be confounded with official duties.

Those who are spiritual pay these with one disposition of heart, and those who are merely natural with another.

The spiritual pay them from good will, because they are collected for the preservation of their country, and for its protection and the protection of the church, also for the administration of government by officials and governors, to whom salaries and stipends must be paid from the public treasury. Those, therefore, to whom their country and also the church are the neighbor, pay their taxes willingly and cheerfully, and regard it as iniquitous to deceive or defraud.

But those to whom their country and the church are not the neighbor pay them unwillingly and with resistance; and at every opportunity defraud and withhold; for to such their own household and their own flesh are the neighbor.

(True Christian Religion 430)