It is Not Difficult in The Heavenly Doctrine, as it was on Babylon Destroyed
Two things are requisite:(1) to believe in the Lord, that is, to believe that all good and truth is from Him;
(2) to live an honest life, consequently, to shun outward evils, which also are contrary to the civil laws.
A Christian lives as anyone else in external form: he may grow rich, but not by craft and trickery; he may eat and drink well, but not place his very life in those things, and find his delight in superfluities and also in drunkenness, that is, live for appetite; he may be well, and even, according to his condition, handsomely, housed; he may associate with others, like other men, amuse himself in their society; discuss the affairs of the world and the various things in domestic matters: in a word, without any difference in externals, to such an extent that no difference is apparent. Neither is it necessary that he should appear devout, so as [to go about] as it were with a sorrowful countenance, and with shaking head, and with sighing; but that he be cheerful and merry; nor [need he] give his goods to the poor, except so far as the affection of the neighbor prompts him. He ought to be a moral man, and a good one; but, with him, the moral man, because he reflects that all good and truth is from the Lord, is a spiritual man.Not so, however, with those who do not believe in the Divine, but [regard] self and the world in all things, or with whom moral life is for the sake of self and the world: their moral life is natural, and not in the least spiritual.
With the truly Christian man whose faith and life is of such a quality, the internal is altogether different. It is turned towards heaven. The Lord leads his will, or love, and gives him the affection of good, that is, the faculty of being affected, or made glad, by reason of good; he also leads his understanding, so that he may be affected with truth, and so that, immediately he hears it, he is also gladdened, and it is implanted in his life; and, so far as he learns the truth, so far it abides in him, and, by its means, he is led by the Lord.
For he who does not know what good and truth are, cannot be led by the Lord. A man is led through that which he knows.The Lord inflows into those things which he knows, and so leads his affections and thoughts. This is understood by being affected by truth for the sake of truth, and by good for the sake of good, and loving truth and good for the sake of life. It is not that he reflects therefrom that he will now implant it in his life: this would be from proprium; but the Lord leads him, through those things which he learns, from affection or love.
The reason he is in freedom, is, because he is led to good in such a way as to be affected by truth and good, and thus as to be led in it by the Lord; and, then, he is led away from thinking and willing evil. Also, not to will evil, but good, is freedom; and this freedom is from the Lord. These are averse from, and they shun, evils; wherefore, to think and to do them, is, with them, compulsion. But, with the evil, doing and thinking evils is freedom, and thinking and willing good is compulsion; and to be of such a character, is to be a slave.
(Swedenborg' s Diary 5793-5797)