4096. CONCERNING LIFE. [It may be observed] that there ought to be to man and spirit one life, which is true life, to wit, that of love, and thence of the knowledges of faith, and thus of things confirming. Such a life is truly angelic, and such was at first the life of the Most Ancient Church; but when [their pure] lives were successively turned into cupidities, and thence into falsities, there arose the direful persuasions of the Antediluvians; thus the life of persuasions. After the flood the life was severed, and there became two lives, namely, one of cupidities, which remained, being hereditarily transmitted with increase, while [the other], the life of faith, was made a life by itself and separate; for there may be given a life of faith, yea, of the knowledge of faith, which was the life of the Church after the flood; and at length, as they were ignorant of external rites, they were inaugurated into that life and then into the precepts of the law, which they had not previously known. Wherefore there is also given at this day a life of faith without love, which, however, cannot enter heaven, unless the Lord shall previously have conjoined it with the life of love. - 1748, November 28.