Heaven and its Wonders and HellSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Heaven and its Wonders and Hell
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Future life -- Christianity -- Early work to 1800; Heaven -- Christianity; Hell -- Christianity
church, and have called the truths of their faith, are taken away;
and they imbibe in their place every falsity that is in accord with
the evil of their life. For they are all let down into their loves
and into the falsities agreeing with them; and they then hate and
abhor and therefore reject truths, because they are repugnant to the
falsities of evil in which they are. From all my experience in what
pertains to heaven and hell I can bear witness that all those who
from their doctrine have professed faith alone, and whose life has
been evil, are in hell. I have seen many thousands of them cast down
to hell. (Respecting these see the treatise on The Last Judgment and
the Destruction of Babylon.)
483. (v) Love in act, that is, the life of man, is what endures. This
follows as a conclusion from what has just been shown from
experience, and from what has been said about deeds and works. Love
in act is work and deed.
484. It must be understood that all works and deeds pertain to moral
and civil life, and therefore have regard to what is honest and
right, and what is just and equitable, what is honest and right
pertaining to moral life, and what is just and equitable to civil
life. The love from which deeds are done is either heavenly or
infernal. Works and deeds of moral and civil life, when they are done
from heavenly love, are heavenly; for what is done from heavenly love
is done from the Lord, and everything done from the Lord is good. But
the deeds and works of moral and civil life when done from infernal
love are infernal; for what is done from this love, which is the love
of self and of the world, is done from man himself, and everything
that is done from man himself is in itself evil; for man regarded in
himself, that is, in regard to what is his own, is nothing but
evil.{1}
{Footnote 1} Man's own consists in loving himself more than
God, and the world more than heaven, and in making nothing of
his neighbor in comparison with himself, thus it consists in
the love of self and of the world (n. 694, 731, 4317). Man is
born into this own, and it is dense evil (n. 210, 215, 731,
874-876, 987, 1047, 2307, 2308, 3518, 3701, 3812, 8480, 8550,
10283, 10284, 10286, 10732). From what is man's own not only
every evil but also every falsity is derived (n. 1047, 10283,
10284, 10286). The evils that are from what is man's own are
contempt for others, enmity, hatred, revenge, cruelty, deceit
(n. 6667, 7370, 7373, 7374, 9348, 10038, 10742). So far as what
is man's own rules, the good of love and the truth of faith are
either rejected or suffocated or perverted (n. 2041, 7491,
7492, 7643, 8487, 10455, 10742). What is man's own is hell in
him (n. 694, 8480). The good that man does from what is his own
is not good, but in itself is evil (n. 8480).
485. L. THE DELIGHTS OF EVERY ONE'S LIFE ARE CHANGED AFTER DEATH INTO
THINGS THAT CORRESPOND.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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