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THE SWEDENBORG LIBRARY.

But the case is altogether otherwise with churches which make faith the essential thing, imagining that if they know and think such and such things they shall be saved, and this without regard to the life. When this is the case, then several churches do not make one, nor indeed are they churches.

It is the good of faith which constitutes the church, that is, a real life of love and charity according to those things which faith teaches. Doctrinals are for the sake of life. This every one may know; for what are doctrinals but for some end? and what is the end but life, that a man may become such as doctrinals teach him to be? (A. C. 2982.)

Those who say they are of the church, who are in the affection of truth and not in the good of truth, that is, who do not live according to the truth, are much deceived. They are out of the church notwithstanding their admission into the congregation of the church [that is, into the visible body which is commonly called the church]; for they are in the affection of evil with which truth cannot be conjoined. (A. C. 3963.)

He who is not in spiritual good, that is, in the good of charity, and in spiritual truths, that is, the truths of faith, is not of the church, notwithstanding his being born within it [that is, in a country where the Word is, and the Lord is thereby known]. For the whole heavenly kingdom of the Lord is in the good of love and faith; and unless the church be in like good, it cannot

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