able to the teaching of Scripture, which compares the growth of this new life from its germ in the soul, to the growth of a plant from its seed; "first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear."
And while a man should shun evils as of himself, he should at the same time (and must if he would lay the axe at the root of the tree, and remove the prompting motive to evil) believe and acknowledge that it is the Lord who gives him the inclination and power to do so; and that in and of himself alone he is utterly helpless, having no power to shun evil or to do good.
"The regenerated man," says Swedenborg, "is a heaven in the least form; therefore also there is in him an order similar to that which is in heaven. When man is born he is, as to hereditary evils, a hell in the least form; and he also becomes a hell, so far as he takes from hereditary evils and superadds to them his own. Hence the order of his life from nativity and from actual life, is opposite to the order of heaven; for man, from the proprium, loves himself more than the Lord, and the world more than heaven; when yet the life of heaven consists in loving the Lord above all things, and the neighbor as himself. Hence it is evident that the former life which is of hell, must be altogether destroyed, that is, evils and falsities must be removed, in order that the new life which is the life of heaven, may be implanted. This cannot by any means be done hastily; for every evil being inrooted with its falsities, has connexion
