Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/110

 say, partly by the soul in its own free essence, partly by the soul as instructed and advised by the diverse innumerable effects presented in the world. . . . It cannot be denied that there is that in man as man, provided he enjoy the use of reason, which acknowledges an omnipotent God, an omnipresent and all-provident Deity; it seems therefore to be innate, and to be a power or action of reason, when not on the one hand troubled too much by its own ideas, nor on the other hand too destitute of all cultivation and development. But we care not whether it be spontaneous or the contrary, if it be admitted that there is no one living, provided he be not over or under rational, but acknowledges the existence of a Deity, however ignorant he be of the Divine nature. Hence it is that after man has exerted his powers and whetted his reason to find out this nature, he falls into strange darkness and ideal conclusions. He knows indeed that there is a Deity, that there is an omnipotence, but he has been unsuccessful in eliciting the nature of either from any dictates of reason. . . . In truth mankind is always desirous to imagine the qualities of God, to bring Him within the bounds of