Selection from Divine Providence ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
Freedom and Rationality - Those to whom it cannot be given or scarcely given
Every man possesses the faculty to will that is called liberty, and the faculty to understand that is called rationality; but it should be well understood that these faculties are, as it were, innate in man, for his human itself is in them.It is one thing to act from freedom in accordance with reason, and another thing to act from freedom itself in accordance with reason itself. Only such as have suffered themselves to be regenerated by the Lord act from freedom itself in accordance with reason itself; all others act from freedom in accordance with thought to which they give the semblance of reason. And yet every man, unless born foolish or excessively stupid, is able to attain to reason itself, and through it to freedom itself. But there are numerous reasons why every man does not do this that will be made known in what follows. Here it will only be told who those are to whom freedom itself or liberty itself, together with reason itself or rationality itself, cannot be given; and to whom they can scarcely be given.
• Liberty itself and rationality itself cannot be given to those that are born foolish, or to those who have become foolish, so long as they remain so.
• They cannot be given to those born stupid and gross, or to any who have become so from the torpor of idleness, or from any disease that has perverted or wholly closed the interiors of the mind, or from the love of a beastly life.
• Liberty itself and rationality itself cannot be given to those in the Christian world who wholly deny the Lord's Divinity and the holiness of the Word, and have maintained this denial confirmed in them to the end of life; for this is meant by the sin against the Holy Spirit which is not forgiven either in this age or in the age to come (Matt. 12:31, 32).
• Neither can liberty itself and rationality itself be given to those who attribute all things to nature and nothing to the Divine, and who have made this to be their belief by reasonings from things visible; for such are atheists.
• Liberty itself and rationality itself can scarcely be given to those who have strongly confirmed themselves in falsities of religion, for a confirmer of falsity is a denier of truth. But they can be given to those who, whatever their religion may be, have not so confirmed themselves ...
• Infants and children cannot come into liberty itself and rationality itself until they are grown up; for the interiors of the mind in man are opened gradually; and in the meantime, they are like seeds in unripe fruit, that cannot sprout in the soil.
It has been said that liberty itself and rationality itself cannot be given to those that have denied the Lord's Divinity and the holiness of the Word, or to those that have confirmed themselves in favor of nature against the Divine, and scarcely to those that have strongly confirmed themselves in falsities of religion. Yet none of these have lost the faculties themselves.
I have known atheists who have become devils and satans to understand the arcana of wisdom as well as angels, but only while they heard them from others; and when they returned into their own thoughts they did not understand, for the reason that they had no desire to. But they were shown that they, too, might have the desire if they were not misled by the love and consequent enjoyment of evil; and this they understood when they heard it, and even asserted that they might, but that they had no wish to be able, since this would make them unable to will what they had willed, which was evil, from enjoyment in its lust. I have often heard such wonderful things in the spiritual world, by which it has been fully proved to me that every man possesses liberty and rationality; and that everyone can come into liberty itself and rationality itself provided he shuns evils as sins.
But a mature man who does not come into liberty itself and rationality itself in the world can in no wise come into them after death; for his state of life then remains forever such as it had been in the world.
(Divine Providence 98-99)