Heaven and Hell - Swedenborg Foundation

HEAVEN AND HELL 395
perceived that they had no faith at all; and afterwards they
confessed that merely believing what is true and believing the
Word is not faith, but that faith is loving truth from heavenly
love, and willing and doing it from interior affection.
Moreover, they were shown that their persuasion which they
called faith was merely like the light of winter, in which light,
because it has no heat in it, all things on the earth are bound
up in frost, become torpid, and lie buried under the snow. As
soon, therefore, as the light of persuasive faith in them is
touched by the rays of the light of heaven it is not only
extinguished but is turned into a dense darkness, in which no
one can see himself; and at the same time their interiors are so
obscured that they can understand nothing at all, and at length
become insane from falsities. Consequently with such, all the
truths that they have known from the Word and from the
doctrine of the church, and have called the truths of their faith,
are taken away; and they imbibe in their place every falsity that
is in accord with the evil of their life. For they are all let down
into their loves and into the falsities agreeing with them; and
they then hate and abhor and therefore reject truths, because
they are repugnant to the falsities of evil in which they are.
From all my experience in what pertains to heaven and hell I
can bear witness that all those who from their doctrine have
professed faith alone, and whose life has been evil, are in hell. I
have seen many thousands of them cast down to hell.
(Respecting these see the treatise Last Judgment and the
Destruction of Babylon.)
483. (5) Love in act, that is, the life of man, is what endures.
This follows as a conclusion from what has just been shown
from experience, and from what has been said about deeds and
works. Love in act is work and deed.
484. It must be understood that all works and deeds pertain
to moral and civil life, and therefore have regard to what is
honest and right, and what is just and equitable, what is honest
and right pertaining to moral life, and what is just and
equitable to civil life. The love from which deeds are done is