Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 3.djvu/85

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BELIEVING IN SIMPLICITY.
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expressly forbidden in the decalogue, is directly opposite to the temper and disposition of those who are principled in the life of charity; for it is the nature of charity to wish to impart good to others from itself, and out of what is its own, thus on no account to covet what belongs to them.

These are the commandments of the decalogue, which are exterior doctrinals of faith, and which, with those who are in charity and the life thereof, are not only retained as matters of science in the memory, but are laid up in the heart and inscribed on the inner man, since all such are in charity and its essential life. Not to mention other things composing points of doctrine, which they are in like manner acquainted with from charity alone, because they live according to a conscience of what is right.

Such persons, also, in cases where they do not so well understand, and are not able to determine what is right and true, yet believe in simplicity or out of a simple heart that it is so, because the Lord has said it; and whoever thus believes does not incur guilt, although what he believes be not true in itself, but only an apparent truth.

For example: if he believes that the Lord is angry, that he punishes, that he leads into temptation and the like; or if he believes that the bread and wine in the holy supper are somewhat significative; or that the flesh and blood of the Lord are somehow present therein in the way they explain it; (it is of no consequence

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