Arcana Coelestia volume 7 - Swedenborg Foundation

ARCANA COELESTIA 3888the understanding is called “truth” in the regenerate, but “falsity”in the unregenerate. Yet as man’s will does not appear to the senseexcept through the understanding (for the understanding is the willin form, or the will formed to the sense), it is therefore supposedthat the truth which proceeds from the understanding is thefirstborn, and yet it is not, except in appearance, for the reasongiven.[3] Hence the old controversy as to whether the truth which is offaith, or the good which is of charity, is the firstborn of the church.They who decided from the appearance said that truth is thefirstborn, but they who did not decide from the appearance,acknowledged that good is the firstborn. Hence also it is that at thepresent day faith is made the first and very essential of the church,and charity is made secondary and not essential; but men have goneinto error much further than the ancients, by declaring that faithalone saves. In the church by “faith” is meant all the truth ofdoctrine, and by “charity” all the good of life. They indeed callcharity and its works the “fruits of faith”; but who believes thatfruits do anything for salvation when it is believed that a man maybe saved by faith at the last hour of his life, whatever his previouslife has been, and when in their teaching they even separate works,which are of charity, from faith, saying that faith alone saveswithout good works, or that works, which are of the life, donothing toward salvation? Oh, what a faith! And oh, what a church!They adore dead faith, and reject living faith; and yet faith withoutcharity is as a body without a soul, and we know that a bodywithout a soul is removed from sight and cast forth, because of itsstench: so is it with faith without charity in the other life. All thosewho have been in faith so called without charity are in hell, whileall who have been in charity are in heaven; for everyone’s liferemains, but not his doctrine except insofar as it is derived from hislife.[4] That by “Manasseh” is signified the new will in the natural, orwhat is the same, spiritual good there, cannot be so well shownfrom other passages of the Word as that by “Ephraim” is signifiedthe new understanding in the natural, or spiritual truth therein.