Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/205

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in the thought of his outer man; nor do they enter into his life until they enter into his will, and thence into his actions. Then for the first time does faith exist in man's spirit; for man's spirit, the life of which is his essential life, is formed from his will, and from so much of his thought as proceeds from his will; the memory of man, and the thought derived from it, being only the court-yard by which introduction is effected. Whether you say the will or the love, it is the same, since every one wills what he loves and loves what he wills; and the will is the receptacle of love, and the intellect whose province it is to think, is the receptacle of faith.

A man may know, think and understand many things, but those which do not accord with his will or love he rejects when left to himself to meditate from his own will or love; and therefore he also rejects them after the life of the body, when he lives in the spirit. For that alone remains in man's spirit which has entered into his will or love; other things after death being viewed as foreign, which he turns out of doors and regards with aversion because they are not of his love. But it is another thing when man not merely believes those doctrinals of the church which are derived from the Word, but wills and does them too. Then faith exists; for faith is the affection of truth from the act of willing it because it is truth; the act of willing truth for its own sake being the spiritual essence of a man, and divested of the natural