All laws, civil, moral, and natural, prescribe that one must not steal,
must not commit adultery, must not kill, must not bear false witness;
and yet a man is saved not by shunning these evils from these laws
alone, but by shunning them also from spiritual law, thus shunning them
as sins. For with such a man there is religion, and a belief that there
is a God, a heaven and a hell, and a life after death; with such a man
there is a civil life, a moral life, and a natural life; a civil life
because there is justice, a moral life because there is honesty, and a
natural life because there is manhood.

But he who does not live according to these commandments as a spiritual
man is neither a civil man, nor a moral man, nor a natural man; for he
is destitute of justice, of honesty, and even of manhood, since the
Divine is not in these. For there can be nothing good in and from
itself, but only from God; so there can be nothing just, nothing truly
honest or truly human in itself and from itself, but only from God, and
only when the Divine is in it. Consider whether anyone who has hell in
him, or who is a devil, can do what is just from justice or for the sake
of justice; in like manner what is honest, or what is truly human. The
truly human is what is from order and according to order, and what is
from sound reason; and God is order, and sound reason is from God. In a
word, he who does not shun evils as sins is not a man. Everyone who
makes these commandments to belong to his religion becomes a citizen and
an inhabitant of heaven; but he who does not make them to belong to his
religion, although in externals he may live according to them from
natural, moral, and civil law, becomes a citizen and an inhabitant of
the world, but not of heaven.

Most nations possess a knowledge of these commandments, and make them
the commandments of their religion, and live according to them because