those who were cast into hell had been from corporeal and worldly love.
Heavenly love is to love what is good, sincere and just for their own sake, and from the love of such things to do them. Thence is derived the life of goodness, sincerity and justice, which is heavenly life. They who love goodness, sincerity and justice for their own sake, and practice or live them, love the Lord above all things, because these are from Him;[1] and they also love the neighbor, because these are the neighbor that is to be loved.
But corporeal love is to love what is good, sincere and just, not for their own sake but for the sake of
- ↑ He who believes that he loves the Lord, and does not live according to his precepts, is very much deceived. For to love the Lord is to live according to his precepts; which precepts are the truths that are from Him and in which He is. Therefore in the degree that these precepts are loved, that is, in the degree that the life is formed according to them from love, in the same degree the Lord is loved. The reason is, that He loves man, and from love desires that he may be happy to eternity; and man cannot be made happy except by a life according to the precepts of the Lord; for by these man is regenerated and made spiritual, and can thus be elevated into heaven. But to love the Lord without living according to his precepts, is not to love Him; for in this case there is nothing appertaining to a man into which the Lord can flow, and elevate him to himself. He is an empty vessel; for there is nothing of life in his faith or in his love—A. C. 10,578.
