The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine
Emanuel Swedenborg
• Doctrinal Series •
REGENERATION
(pt. 3)
Emanuel Swedenborg
• Doctrinal Series •
REGENERATION
(pt. 3)
Every man is born of his parents into the evils of the love of self and of the world. Every evil, which by habit has acquired as it were a nature, is derived into the offspring; thus it descends successively from parents, from grandfathers, and from great-grandfathers, in a long series backwards; whence the derivation of evil at length becomes so great, that the whole of man's own life is nothing else but evil. This continual derivation of evil is not broken and altered, except by the life of faith and charity from the Lord.
(The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine 175)