, nay, and never reason about
them whether they be so or not. These are they of whom the Lord says,
"_Let your discourse be Yea, yea, Nay, nay; what is beyond this is of
evil_" [(Matt. v. 37)]. Hence it was that those spirits said that they
did not know what it is to have faith or to believe. They consider
this to be like one saying to his companion, who with his own eyes
sees houses or trees, that he ought to have faith or to believe that
they are houses and trees, when he sees clearly that they are so. Such
are they who are of the Lord's celestial kingdom, and such were these
angelic spirits[aaa]. We told them that few on our Earth have interior
perception, because in their youth they learn truths, and do not
practise them. For man has two faculties, which are called the
understanding and the will; they who admit truths no further than into
the memory, and thence in some degree into the understanding, but not
into the life, that is, into the will, these, inasmuch as they cannot
be in any enlightenment or interior sight from the Lord, say that
those truths ought to be believed, or that man ought to have faith in
them; and they also reason about them whether they be truths or
not; nay, they are not willing that they should be perceived by any
interior sight, or by any enlightenment by the understanding. They say
this, because truths with them are without light from heaven, and
to those who see without light from heaven, falsities may appear as
truths, and truths as falsities. Hence so great blindness has fallen
on many on our Earth, that although a man does not practise truths or
live according to them, they say nevertheless that he may be saved by
faith alone, as if a man were not man from the life and according to
it, but from the knowledge of such things as belong to faith, apart
from the life. We afterwards conversed with them concerning the Lord,
concerning love to Him, love towards the neighbour, and regeneration;
saying, that loving the Lord consists in loving the precepts which are
from Him, that is, in living according to them from love[bbb]; that
love towards the neighbour consists in willing good and thence doing
good to a fellow-citizen, to one's country, to the church, to the
Lord's kingdom, not for the selfish end of being seen or acquiring
merit, but from the affection of good[ccc]. Concerning regeneration,
we observed that they who are being regenerated by the Lord, and
who commit truths immediately to th