Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 3.djvu/26

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THE SWEDENBORO LIBRARY.

to worship Him, yea, as it were to love Him, the means of doing so being innumerable. But since what is done in a state of compulsion is not conjoined with, consequently is not appropriated to, man; therefore nothing can be further from the Lord than to compel any one.

So long as man is engaged in combats, or is one of the church combating, it appears as if the Lord compels him, and therefore that he has no freedom; for he fights at that time continually against self-love and the love of the world, consequently against the freedom in which he was born and has grown up; and this is the reason of such appearance. But his freedom is stronger in the combats wherein he conquers, than out of them; yet it is a freedom not from himself but from the Lord, and still it appears as his own.


TRUE FREEDOM IS FROM THE LORD.

The freedom of thinking truth which is of faith, and of doing good which is of charity, all flows in from the Lord. He is essential good and truth, consequently is the fountain of good and truth. All the angels are in such freedom, yea in the very perception that it is so. The inmost angels perceive how much is from the Lord, and how much from themselves. So much as is from the Lord, so far they are in happiness; whereas so much as is from themselves, so far they are deprived of happiness.

In order, therefore, that man may receive a heavenly

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