Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/152

148 which men are now more capable than heretofore of discerning the truth when presented to them, and of receiving it in heart and life. For such is the order induced by the Lord in the whole spiritual world by the judgment lately accomplished there, that a most exact equilibrium between good and evil, or between heaven and hell, is established; and man being placed, as to his spirit, in this equilibrium, he can therefore freely turn either to the one, or to the other: whereas before the judgment the equilibrium was destroyed by the ascendency and continual increase of the power of evil. If the change here spoken of cannot readily be perceived under the idea of spiritual liberty, by reason of it's very interior operation, it certainly may under that of liberality, one of it's first visible and manifest effects, which gives to the present age a character unknown to any of the former periods of Christianity, and prepares the human mind for the reception of those divine truths now revealed, of which the internal sense of the Holy Word consists. To know what will be the state of the church hereafter as to particulars, is indeed beyond the wisdom even of angels in heaven: for they know not future events, unless revealed to them, these being known only to the Lord. But this is capable of being ascertained, because it is already a fact, that that servitude and captivity, in which the human mind has heretofore been involved, is removed; and that now, by virtue of the spiritual freedom which is restored, man is enabled to perceive interior truths more clearly and distinctly than before, if desirous thereof, and thus to become more and more internal, if he is so disposed. Slender however as may be the hope of seeing the New Jerusalem established among the present race of professing Christians, we have an assurance given us