Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 3.djvu/59

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TRUTH TO BE RECEIVED RATIONALLY.
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not the understanding which requires to be illumined and instructed? And what is the understanding closed by religion, but thick darkness, and such darkness, too, as rejects from itself the light that would illumine?

Again: who can acknowledge truth and retain it, unless he sees it? What is truth not seen, but a voice not understood, which, by sensual-corporeal men, is usually retained in the memory, but not so by the wise? The wise, indeed, cast off empty or unmeaning words from the memory, that is, such as have not entered into their minds by being understood; as that one God consists of three persons; also that the Lord, born from eternity, is not one and the same as the Lord born in time; that is, that one Lord is God, and not the other; and again, that a life of charity which consists in good works, and likewise in repenting of evil works, contributes nothing to salvation.

A wise man does not understand such things. Therefore from his rationality he says, Is religion then of no consequence? Does not religion consist in shunning evil and doing good? Should not the doctrine of the church teach this, as well as what a man ought to believe, that he may do the good things of religion from God? (A. R. 564, 914.)


THE UNDERSTANDING TO BE ENLIGHTENED.

There is the thought of light concerning God, and concerning things divine which in heaven are called

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