Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence by Emanuel Swedenborg
page 137 of 404 (33%)
page 137 of 404 (33%)
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affections of good when a man on his part removes the evils as sins. It
was shown earlier that man possesses a natural, a spiritual and a celestial mind, that he is only in the natural mind as long as he is in lusts of evil and their enjoyments, and that during this time the spiritual mind is closed. But as soon as a man on self-examination confesses evils to be sins against God because they are contrary to divine laws and accordingly resolves to desist from them, the Lord opens the spiritual mind, enters the natural by affections of truth and good, enters the reason, and by the reason puts into order what is disordered below in the natural. It is this that strikes the man as a battle, and strikes those who have indulged much in enjoyments of evil as temptation, for when the order of its thinking is inverted the lower mind suffers pain. Inasmuch as the battle is against what is in the man himself and what he feels to be his, and no one can fight against himself except from a more interior self and from freedom in it, it follows that the internal man fights against the external and does so from freedom, and compels the external to obey. This, then, is compelling oneself, and, clearly, it is not contrary to liberty and rationality, but in accord with them. 148. Everyone desires to be free, moreover, and to be rid of the unfree or servitude. The boy under a master wishes to be his own master and thus free; so every man-servant under his master or maid under her mistress. Every girl wishes to leave the paternal home and marry, to do freely in a home of her own; and every boy who desires to work, enter business, or hold some position wishes to be released from his subordination to others and to be at his own disposal. All of these who serve willingly in order to be free compel themselves, and in doing so act from freedom according to reason but from an inner freedom, by which outward freedom is regarded |
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