Emanuel Swedenborg

“ Again, it is impossible for those who are in corporeal love to live at all in the heat of heaven, for the heat of heaven is heavenly love; but they can live in the heat of hell, which is the love of raging against others that do not favor them. The delights of that love are contempt of others, enmity, hatred and revenge; and when they are in these delights they are in their life, and have no idea what it is to do good to others from good itself and for the sake of good itself, knowing only what it is to do good from evil and for the sake of evil. ”

“ Love in act, that is, the life of man, is what endures. This follows as a conclusion from what has just been shown from experience, and from what has been said about deeds and works. Love in act is work and deed. ”

“ For they are all let down into their loves and into the falsities agreeing with them; and they then hate and abhor and therefore reject truths, because they are repugnant to the falsities of evil in which they are. From all my experience in what pertains to heaven and hell I can bear witness that all those who from their doctrine have professed faith alone, and whose life has been evil, are in hell. ”

“ Heavenly love consists in loving what is good, honest, and just, because it is good, honest and just, and in doing this from love; and those that have this love have a life of goodness, honesty, and justice, which is the heavenly life. Those that love what is good, honest, and just, for its own sake, and who do this or live it, love the Lord above all things, because this is from Him; they also love the neighbor, because this is the neighbor who is to be loved. ”

“ All this makes clear what faith is when separated from love, namely, that it is no faith, but mere knowledge, which has no spiritual life in it; likewise what a deed or work is apart from love, namely, that it is not a deed or work of life, but a deed or work of death, which possesses an appearance of life from an evil love and a belief in what is false. ”

“ In the world of spirits ways are seen, some leading to heaven, some to hell, and each to some particular society. Good spirits go only in the ways that lead to heaven, and to the society there that is in the good of their love; and do not see the ways that lead elsewhere; while evil spirits go only in the ways that lead to hell, and to the society there that is in the evil of their love; and do not see the ways that lead elsewhere; or if they see them have no wish to enter them. In the spiritual world these ways are real appearances, which correspond to truths or falsities ”

“ Love and will constitute the soul itself of a deed or work, and give form to its body in the honest and just things that the man does. This is the sole source of man's spiritual body, or the body of his spirit; that is, it is formed solely out of the things that the man does from his love or will (see above, n. 463) . In a word, all things of man and his spirit are contained in his deeds or works. [3] ”

“ The angels declare that the life of the ruling love is never changed in any one even to eternity, since everyone is his love; consequently to change that love in a spirit is to take away or extinguish his life; and for the reason that man after death is no longer capable of being reformed by instruction, as in the world, because the outmost plane, which consists of natural knowledges and affections, is then quiescent and not being spiritual cannot be opened (see above, n. 464) ; and upon that plane the interiors pertaining to the mind and disposition rest as a house rests on its foundation ”

“ Taken together they constitute a kingdom, as it were, such being the order in which they are arranged in man, although man knows nothing what ever about that arrangement. And yet something of it is made manifest to him in the other life, for the spread of his thought and affection there is in accordance with the arrangement of his loves, his thought and affection extending into heavenly societies when the ruling love is made up of the loves of heaven, but into infernal societies when it is made up of the loves of hell. ”

“ I have often wondered how this could be, for nothing of the kind can occur in the world; but I have been told that it is the same with the spirit in man, which when it turns itself away from another ceases to be within his view. ”

“ In foretelling the last judgment the Lord recounts nothing but works, teaching that those that have done good works will enter into eternal life, and those that have done evil works will enter into damnation, as in Matthew (25:32-46) , and in many other passages that treat of the salvation and condemnation of man. It is clear that works and deeds constitute the outward life of man, and that the quality of his inward life is made evident in them. ”

“ If the thought and will are good the deeds and works are good; but if the thought and will are evil the deeds and works are evil, although in outward form they appear alike. A thousand men may act alike, that is, may do like deeds, so alike in outward form as to be almost undistinguishable, and yet each one regarded in itself be different, because from an unlike will. ”

“ Consequently with such, all the truths that they have known from the Word and from the doctrine of the church, and have called the truths of their faith, are taken away; and they imbibe in their place every falsity that is in accord with the evil of their life. ”

“ The deeds or works of such are inwardly good, and therefore are outwardly good also; for, as has been said above, deeds or works are precisely such in quality as the thought and will from which they proceed, and apart from thought and will they are not deeds and works, but only inanimate movements. ”