Spiritual Life and the Word of God by Emanuel Swedenborg
page 83 of 136 (61%)
page 83 of 136 (61%)
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When a man abstains from hatred and turns away from it and shuns it as devilish, love, charity, mercy, clemency flow in through heaven from the Lord, and then for the first time the works that he does are works of love and charity; while the works he had done before, however good might be their appearance in the external form, were all works of love of self and of the world, in which hatred lurked whenever they were not rewarded. So long as hatred is not put away so long man is merely natural; and the merely natural man remains in all his inherited evil, nor can he become spiritual until hatred, with its root, which is love of ruling over all, is put away; for the fire of heaven, which is spiritual love, cannot flow in so long as the fire of hell, which is hatred, stands in the way and shuts it out. (A.E., n. 1017.) VIII. The Eighth Commandment The eighth commandment of the Decalogue, "Thou shalt not bear false witness," shall now be explained. "To bear false witness" signifies in the sense nearest to the letter to lie about the neighbor by accusing him falsely. But in the internal sense it signifies to call what is just unjust, and what is unjust just, and to confirm this by means of falsities; while in the inmost sense it signifies to falsity the truth and good of the Word, and on the other hand to prove a falsity of doctrine to be true by confirming it by means of fallacies, appearances, fabrications, knowledges falsely applied, sophistries, and the like. The confirmations themselves and the consequent persuasions are false witnesses, for they are false attestations. From this it can be seen that what is here meant is not only false witness before a judge, but even a judge himself who in perverting right |
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