Page:Arcana Coelestia (Potts) vol 1.djvu/32

20 Lord, are from that love in all the knowledges of faith, and are in such a life and light of intelligence that scarcely anything of it can be described. But, on the other hand, spirits who are in the knowledge of the doctrinals of faith, without love, are in such a coldness of life and obscurity of light that they cannot even approach the first threshold of the court of the heavens, but flee back again. Some of them, while not living according to His precepts, say that they have believed in the Lord, and it was of such that the Lord said in Matthew:—

[2] Hence it is evident that those who are in love are also in faith, and thereby in heavenly life, but not those who say they are in faith, and are not in the life of love. The life of faith without love is like the light of the sun without heat, as in the time of winter, when nothing grows, but all things are torpid and dead; whereas faith proceeding from love is like the light of the sun in the time of spring, when all things grow and flourish in consequence of the sun's fructifying heat. It is precisely similar in regard to spiritual and heavenly things, which are usually represented in the Word by such as exist in the world and on the face of the earth. No faith, and faith without love, are also compared by the Lord to "winter," where He foretells the consummation of the age, in Mark:—

"Flight" means the last time, and also that of every man when he dies. "Winter" is a life destitute of love; the "day of affliction" is its miserable state in the other life.

. Man has two faculties: will and understanding. When the understanding is governed by the will they together constitute one mind, and thus one life, for then what the man wills and does he also thinks and intends. But when the understanding is at variance with the will (as with those who say they have faith, and yet live in contradiction to faith), then the one mind is divided into two, one of which desires to exalt itself