Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 3743

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

3743. But they who are not in love to the Lord and toward their neighbor, consequently who are not in the life of good and truth, are not able to acknowledge that there is only one influent life, and still less that this life is from the Lord. But all such are indignant, nay, feel aversion, when it is said that they do not live from themselves. The love of self is the cause of this; and wonderful to say, although shown by living experience in the other life that they do not live from themselves, and although being at the time convinced they say that it is so, yet afterwards they persist in the same opinion, and imagine that if they lived from another, and not from themselves, all the delight of their life would perish; for they are not aware that the reverse is the truth. For this reason the wicked appropriate evil to themselves, because they do not believe that evils are from hell; and good cannot be appropriated to them, because they believe good to be from themselves, and not from the Lord. Nevertheless the wicked, and also those in hell, are forms recipient of life from the Lord, but such forms that they either reject, or suffocate, or pervert good and truth; and thus the goods and truths which are from the Lord's life become with them evils and falsities. The case herein is like that of the light of the sun, which although single and white, is yet varied as it passes through or flows into various forms, and thereby produces beautiful and pleasing colors, as well as those which are not beautiful and not pleasing.


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church