Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 3.djvu/37

spirits, there is more of freedom than ever exists in any state out of temptations, although the man cannot conceive of it at the time. It is an interior freedom, by virtue whereof he is desirous to subdue the evil; and this desire is so strong as to be equivalent to the force and strength of the evil which assaults him; otherwise he would never engage in the combat.

This freedom is from the Lord, who insinuates it into the man's conscience, and thereby causes him to conquer the evil as if by his own power, or from a proprium of his own. By this freedom man receives a proprium on which the Lord can operate good. Without a proprium, or something of his own, acquired, that is, given, by freedom, no man can be reformed, because he cannot receive a new will which is conscience. Freedom thus conferred is the very plane into which the influx of good and truth from the Lord descends. Hence it is that they who do not resist in temptations from such a principle of willingness or freedom, fall therein.

The life of man consists in freedom, because this is his love; for whatever a man does from a principle of love appears to him to be free: but in the freedom above spoken of, when he compels himself to resist evil and falsity, and to do good, there is heavenly love which the Lord at that time insinuates, and by which he creates his proprium. Therefore the Lord wills that that proprium should appear to man as his own, although it is not his. This proprium which man thus receives by an