Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 3.djvu/53

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THE CENTRAL PRINCIPLE CONTROLS.
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delight is to act from freedom; and as reason favors love, it is also to act according to reason.

As all men, evil and good alike, possess rationality and liberty, a bad man and a good one can equally understand truth and do good. But a bad man cannot do so from freedom according to reason, while a good man can; because a bad man is in the delight of the love of evil, while a good man is in the delight of the love of the good. Therefore the truth which a bad man understands, and the good which he does, are not appropriated to him; but to a good man they are; and without the appropriation of these as man's own, there is no reformation and regeneration. For in the wicked the evil and false are at the centre, and the good and true at the circumference; while in the good, the good and true are at the centre, and the evil and false at the circumference: and in both cases, that which is central flows out to the very circumference, as heat from a central fire, or cold from a central gelidity.

Thus in the wicked the good at the circumference is corrupted by the evil at the centre; and in the good the evil at the circumference is moderated by the good at the centre.


THESE TWO FACULTIES TO BE ACKNOWLEDGED AS THE LORD'S CONTINUAL GIFT.

Man may be reformed and regenerated by means of these two faculties, so far as he can by them be led to acknowledge that everything good and true in his

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