Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/142

136 the pleasure of smelling agreeable odors, of tasting delicacies and useful meats and drinks; and the pleasure of touch; for all these are the lowest or corporeal affections which have their origin from those which are interior. Interior affections which are living, all derive their delight from the good and the true; and the good and true derive theirs from charity and faith, and these come from the Lord, consequently from the very essential Life. Therefore affections and pleasures which have this origin are alive; and if genuine or from this source, they are never denied to any one. When pleasures are thus derived, their delight exceeds indefinitely that from every other origin." (A. C. n. 995.)

The freedom of the human will has been a subject of frequent debate and much angry controversy among Christians. But latterly the more thoughtful and intelligent of all denominations have been gradually settling down in the belief of the New Church doctrine on this subject—most of them, probably, without the knowledge or even suspicion that it is the New Church doctrine; just as they have been gradually sloughing off the old dogmas of election, reprobation, infant damnation, and the like, and accepting something more rational and Scriptural instead.

But at the time when Swedenborg wrote, the