loves and is wise from himself, or that he wills good and understands truth from himself; when nevertheless nothing of all this is from himself, but from God. God alone loves from himself and is wise from himself; because God is love itself and wisdom itself. The likeness or appearance that love and wisdom, or good and truth, are in a man as his, causes a man to be a man, and makes him capable of being conjoined to God, and thereby of living to eternity: from which consideration it follows, that a man is a man from this circumstance, that he can will good and understand truth altogether as from himself, and yet know and believe that it is from God; for as he knows and believes this, God places his image in him, which could not be if he believed it was from himself and not from God." As they said this, being overpowered with zeal derived from the love of truth, they thus continued: "How can a man receive any thing of love and wisdom, and retain it, and reproduce it, unless he feel it as his own? And how can there be conjunction with God by love and wisdom, unless a man have some reciprocity of conjunction? For without such a reciprocity conjunction is impossible; and the reciprocity of conjunction is, that a man should love God, and enjoy the things which are of God, as from himself, and yet believe that it is from God. Also, how can a man live eternally, unless he be conjoined to an eternal God? Consequently how can a man be a man without such a likeness of God in him?" These words met with the approbation of the whole assembly; and they said, Let this conclusive decision be made from them, "A man is a recipient of God, and a recipient of God is an image of God; and since God is love itself and wisdom itself, a man is a recipient of those principles; and a recipient becomes an image of God in proportion to reception; and a man is a likeness of God from this circumstance, that he feels in himself that the things which are of God are in him as his own; but still from that likeness he is only so far an image of God, as he acknowledges that love and wisdom, or good and truth, are not his own in him, and consequently are not from him, but are only in God, and consequently from God."