Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/74

 and therefore also they are exteriorly good; for, as was said above, deeds or works are altogether such as the thought and will from which they proceed; and without these, they are not deeds and works, but only inanimate motions.

From these considerations, it is manifest what is meant by deeds or works in the Word.

Because deeds or works are of the will and thought, therefore also they are of the love and faith, and consequently they are of the same quality as the love and faith. For whether we say the love or the will of a man, it is the same thing; and whether we say the faith or the determinate thought of a man, it is also the same; for what a man loves he also wills; and what he believes he also thinks. If a man loves what he believes, he also wills it, and as far as possible does it.

Every one may know that love and faith reside in man's will and thought, and not out of them, since the will is what is enkindled by love, and the thought is what is enlightened in matters of faith. Therefore only those who can think wisely are enlightened; and they, according to the degree of their illumination, think truths and will them; or, what is the same, they believe truths and love them.

But it is to be observed that the will makes the man, and the thought only so far as it proceeds from the will, and that deeds or works proceed from both; or, what is the same, that love makes the man, and