THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE (pt. 110)

THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE
for the
NEW JERUSALEM
FROM THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
Emanuel Swedenborg
— Doctrinal Series —
(pt. 110)
IF ANY ONE SHUNS EVILS FOR ANY OTHER REASON
THAN BECAUSE THEY ARE SINS,
HE DOES NOT SHUN THEM,
BUT MERELY PREVENTS THEM FROM APPEARING BEFORE THE WORLD.

The concupiscences [A strong desire] of evil that constitute the interiors of man from his birth can be removed by the Lord alone. For the Lord inflows from what is spiritual into what is natural; but man, of himself, from what is natural into what is spiritual; and this influx is contrary to order, and does not operate into the concupiscences and remove them, but shuts them in closer and closer in proportion as it confirms itself. And as the hereditary evil thus lurks there, shut in, after death when the man becomes a spirit it bursts the cover that had hidden it here, and breaks out like the discharge from an ulcer that has been healed only outwardly.

(LIFE 110)

THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE (pt. 109)

THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE
for the
NEW JERUSALEM
FROM THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
Emanuel Swedenborg
— Doctrinal Series —
(pt. 109)
IF ANY ONE SHUNS EVILS FOR ANY OTHER REASON
THAN BECAUSE THEY ARE SINS,
HE DOES NOT SHUN THEM,
BUT MERELY PREVENTS THEM FROM APPEARING BEFORE THE WORLD.

Before men, a natural moral man may appear exactly like a spiritual moral man, but not before the angels. Before the angels in heaven, if he is in goods he appears like an image of wood, if in truths like an image of marble, lifeless, and very different from a spiritual moral man. For a natural moral man is an outwardly moral man, and a spiritual moral man is an inwardly moral man, and what is outward without what is inward is lifeless. It does indeed live, but not the life that is called life.

(LIFE 109)

THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE (pt. 108)

THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE
for the
NEW JERUSALEM
FROM THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
Emanuel Swedenborg
— Doctrinal Series —
(pt. 108)
IF ANY ONE SHUNS EVILS FOR ANY OTHER REASON
THAN BECAUSE THEY ARE SINS,
HE DOES NOT SHUN THEM,
BUT MERELY PREVENTS THEM FROM APPEARING BEFORE THE WORLD.

There are moral men who keep the commandments of the second table of the Decalogue, not committing fraud, blasphemy, revenge, or adultery;— such of them as confirm themselves in the belief that such things are evils because they are injurious to the public weal, and are therefore contrary to the laws of humane conduct, — practice charity, sincerity, justice, chastity.

But if they do these goods and shun those evils merely because they are evils, and not at the same time because they are sins, they are still merely natural men, and with the merely natural the root of evil remains imbedded and is not dislodged; for which reason the goods they do are not goods, because they are from themselves.

(LIFE 108)