Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence by Emanuel Swedenborg
page 129 of 404 (31%)
page 129 of 404 (31%)
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fear; it can be compelled by love and by fear of failing to love. In the
true sense fear of God is nothing else. To be compelled by love and by the fear of failing in it is self-compulsion, and self-compulsion, it will be seen in what follows, is not contrary to freedom and rationality. 137. It is plain then what forced worship and unforced worship are like. Forced worship is corporeal, inanimate, obscure and sad--corporeal because it is of the body and not of the mind; inanimate because it has no life in it; obscure for lack of understanding in it; and sad because it does not have the joy of heaven in it. But worship not forced and real is spiritual, living, seeing and joyful--spiritual, because spirit from the Lord is in it; living, because life from Him is in it; seeing because wisdom from Him is in it; and joyful because heaven from Him is in it. 138. (iv) _No one is reformed in states of no liberty or rationality._ We showed above that only what a man does in freedom according to reason is made his. This is because freedom belongs to the will and reason to the understanding; acting in freedom in accord with reason a man acts from the will by the understanding and what is done in the union of the two is appropriated. Now, since the Lord wills that a man be reformed and regenerated in order that eternal life or the life of heaven may be his, and none can be reformed or regenerated unless good is appropriated to his will and truth to his understanding as if they were his, and only that can be appropriated which is done in freedom of the will and in accord with the reason of the understanding, no one is reformed in states of no freedom or rationality. There are many such states, but they may be summarized as states of fear, misfortune, mental illness, physical disease, ignorance, and intellectual blindness. Something will be said of each. |
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