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THE SWEDENBORG LIBRARY.

priated to him, even though he commits it not; for what is allowable in thought is so from the will, because they harmonize. Therefore when man believes any evil allowable, he releases it from internal restraint, and is withheld from the commission of it by external restraints only, which are fears. And because his spirit favors that evil, therefore he commits it from his allowance of it, whenever external restraints are removed. Meanwhile he commits it in spirit continually.


NECESSARY TO OUR REGENERATION.

Man is reformed and regenerated by means of the two faculties called rationality and liberty, and cannot be reformed and regenerated without them; because by rationality he can understand, and know what is evil and what is good, and therefore what is false and what is true; and by liberty he may in will favor what he understands and knows. But so long as the delight of the love of evil predominates, his will cannot freely favor what is good and true, and he cannot rationally adopt it; therefore he cannot appropriate it. For he appropriates as his own whatever he does from freedom according to reason; and without such appropriation [of the good and true] he is not reformed and regenerated. He first acts from the delight of the good and true, when the delight of the evil and false is removed; for two kinds of delight from love opposed each to the other, cannot exist simultaneously. To act from love's

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