Putting Formal Things Before Essential Ones

Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Internal worship, which is from love and charity, is worship itself. External worship without this internal worship is no worship.

To make internal worship external is to make external worship essential, rather than internal, which is the reverse of the former, being as if it was said that internal worship without external is no worship, while the truth is that external worship without internal is no worship. Such is the religion of those who separate faith from charity, in that they set the things which are of faith before those which are of charity, or the things which are of the knowledges of faith before those which are of the life, thus formal things before essential ones.

All external worship is a formality of internal worship, for internal worship is the very essential; and to make worship consist of that which is formal, without that which is essential, is to make internal worship external. As for example, to hold that if one should live where there is no church, no preaching, no sacraments, no priesthood, he could not be saved, or could have no worship; when yet he can worship the Lord from what is internal. But it does not follow from this that there ought not to be external worship.

To make the matter yet more clear, take as a further example the setting up as the essential itself of worship the frequenting of churches, going to the sacraments, hearing sermons, praying, observing feasts, and many other things which are external and ceremonial, while, talking about faith, men persuade themselves that these are sufficient — all of which are formal things of worship. It is quite true that those who make worship from love and charity the essential, act in the same way, that is, they frequent churches, go to the sacraments, hear sermons, pray, observe feasts, and the like, and this very earnestly and diligently; but they do not make the essential of worship consist in these things. In the external worship of these men there is what is holy and living, because there is internal worship in it; but in the external worship of those referred to before there is not what is holy and not what is living. For the very essential itself is what sanctifies and vivifies the formal or ceremonial; but faith separated from charity cannot sanctify and vivify worship, because the essence and life are absent.

(Arcana Coelestia 1175)

A Corrupted Church

Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

A church is said to be corrupted when it acknowledges the Word and has a certain worship like that of a true church, but yet separates faith from charity, thus from its essential and from its life, whereby faith becomes a kind of dead affair; the result of which necessarily is that the church is corrupted. What the men of the church then become, is evident from the consideration that they can have no conscience; for conscience that is really conscience cannot possibly exist except from charity.

Charity is what makes conscience, that is, the Lord through charity.

What else is conscience than not to do evil to anyone in anyway; that is, to do well to all in every way? Thus conscience belongs to charity, and never to faith separated from charity. If such persons have any conscience, it is a false conscience; and because they are without conscience, they rush into all wickedness, so far as outward bonds are relaxed. They do not even know what charity is, except that it is a word significant of something. And as they are without charity, they do not know what faith is. When questioned, they can only answer that it is a kind of thinking; some, that it is confidence; others, that it is the knowledges of faith; a few, that it is life according to these knowledges, and scarcely any that it is a life of charity or of mutual love. And if this is said to them, and opportunity is given them for reflection, they answer only that all love begins from self, and that he is worse than a heathen who does not take care of himself and his own family. They therefore study nothing but themselves and the world. Hence it comes to pass that they live in their Own [self-hood].

(Arcana Coelestia 1076)

The Cause of the Fall of Every Church

Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

A desire to investigate the mysteries of faith by means of the things of sense and of the memory, was not only the cause of the fall of the posterity of the Most Ancient Church, ... but it is also the cause of the fall of every church; for hence come not only falsities, but also evils of life.

The worldly and corporeal man says in his heart, If I am not instructed concerning the faith, and everything relating to it, by means of the things of sense, so that I may see, or by means of those of the memory [scientifica], so that I may understand, I will not believe; and he confirms himself in this by the consideration that natural things cannot be contrary to spiritual.

Thus he is desirous of being instructed from things of sense in what is celestial and Divine, which is as impossible as it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle; for the more he desires to grow wise by such means, the more he blinds himself, till at length he believes nothing, not even that there is anything spiritual, or that there is eternal life.

This comes from the principle which he assumes. And this is to "eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" of which the more anyone eats, the more dead he becomes.

But he who would be wise from the Lord, and not from the world, says in his heart that the Lord must be believed, that is, the things which the Lord has spoken in the Word, because they are truths; and according to this principle he regulates his thoughts. He confirms himself by things of reason, of knowledge, of the senses, and of nature [per rationalia, scientifica, sensualia et naturalia], and those which are not confirmatory he casts aside.

Everyone may know that man is governed by the principles he assumes, be they ever so false, and that all his knowledge and reasoning favor his principles; for innumerable considerations tending to support them present themselves to his mind, and thus he is confirmed in what is false. He therefore who assumes as a principle that nothing is to be believed until it is seen and understood, can never believe, because spiritual and celestial things cannot be seen with the eyes, or conceived by the imagination.

But the true order is for man to be wise from the Lord, that is, from His Word, and then all things follow, and he is enlightened even in matters of reason and of memory-knowledge [in rationalibus et scientificis]. For it is by no means forbidden to learn the sciences, since they are useful to his life and delightful; nor is he who is in faith prohibited from thinking and speaking as do the learned of the world; but it must be from this principle — to believe the Word of the Lord, and, so far as possible, confirm spiritual and celestial truths by natural truths, in terms familiar to the learned world. Thus his starting-point must be the Lord, and not himself; for the former is life, but the latter is death.

He who desires to be wise from the world, has for his "garden" the things of sense and of memory-knowledge [sensualia et scientifica]; the love of self and the love of the world are his "Eden"; his "east" is the west, or himself; his "river Euphrates" is all his memory-knowledge [scientificum], which is condemned; his "second river" where is "Assyria" is infatuated reasoning productive of falsities; his "third river" where is "Ethiopia" is the principles of evil and falsity thence derived, which are the knowledges of his faith; his "fourth river" is the wisdom thence derived, which in the Word is called "magic." And therefore "Egypt" - which signifies memory-knowledge [scientia] - after the knowledge became magical, signifies such a man, because, as may be seen from the Word, he desires to be wise from self. Of such it is written in Ezekiel:

Thus hath said the Lord Jehovih, Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great whale that lieth in the midst of his rivers, who hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself. And the land of Egypt shall be for a solitude, and a waste, and they shall know that I am Jehovah, because he hath said, The river is mine, and I have made it (Ezek. 29:3, 9)

Such men are also called "trees of Eden in hell" in the same Prophet, where also Pharaoh, or the Egyptian, is treated of in these words:

When I shall have made him descend into hell with them that descend into the pit; to whom art thou thus made like in glory and in greatness among the trees of Eden? yet shalt thou be made to descend with the trees of Eden into the lower earth, in the midst of the uncircumcised, with them that be slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his crew (Ezek. 31:16, 18),

where the "trees of Eden" denote knowledges [scientifica et cognitiones] from the Word, which they thus profane by reasonings.

(Arcana Coelestia 127-130)