SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
suaded by authority. Nor is the nature changed unless we become averse to evils and abhor them, and never lead our mind back into the former state; and unless whenever it slips back, we snatch it out, from the liberty given, and come into the state which agrees with the more perfect love. Not even so is it changed unless we remain a long while in this state, and meet the other with force and violence, clothing ourselves with the opposite new state by constant works and practices of virtues, and so continuing until it has become a second nature and expelled as it were the other nature—so that whenever the old nature returns, we perceive that it must be resisted. In this way and no other we can put off the evil nature and put on a good nature; but it is very difficult in this life without grace and Divine help."
These we feel to be the words of experience, of long and successful labor. But what is here described is only the reformation of the natural mind, or disposition. After this it is necessary that the natural mind should so far submit as to suffer the spiritual mind to flow in with its own loves.
"To this," Swedenborg says, "the intellect unless from what is revealed contributes nothing,
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