rn again or regenerated.
Three things need to be considered if one is to know how man is
regenerated: the nature of his first state, which is one of damnation;
the nature of his second state, which is one of reformation; and the
nature of his third state, which is one of regeneration.

[2] Man's first state, which is one of damnation, is every one's state by
heredity from his parents. For man is born thereby into self-love and
love of the world, and from these as fountains into evils of every kind.
By the enjoyments of those loves he is led, and they keep him from
knowing that he is in evil, for the enjoyment of any love is felt to be
good. Unless he is regenerated, therefore, a man knows no otherwise than
that to love himself and the world above all things is good itself, and
to rule over others and possess their riches is the supreme good. So
comes all evil. For only oneself is regarded with love. If another is
regarded with love it is as devil loves devil or thief thief when they
are in league.

[3] Those who confirm these loves with themselves and the evils flowing
from them, from enjoyment in them, remain natural and become
sensuous-corporeal, and in their own thinking, which is that of their
spirit, are insane. And yet, as long as they are in the world they can
speak and act rationally and wisely, for they are human beings and so
have rationality and liberty, though they still do this from self-love
and love of the world. After death and on becoming spirits, they can
enjoy nothing that they did not enjoy in the world. Their enjoyment is
that of an infernal love and is turned into the unpleasant, sorrowful
and dreadful, meant in the Word by torment and hell-fire. Plain it is,
then, that man's first state is one of damnation and that they are in it
who do not suffer themselves to be regenerated.

[4] Man's second state--of reformation--is his state when he begins to
think of heaven for the joy there, thus of God from whom he has heaven's
joy. But at first the thought comes from the enjoyment of self-love; to
him heaven's joy is that enjoyment. While the enjoyments of that love and
of the evils flowing from it rule, moreover, he cannot but think that to
gain heaven is to pour out prayers, hear sermons, observe the Supper,
give to the poor, help the needy, make offerings to churches, contribute
to hospitals, and the like. In this state a man is persuaded that merely
to think about what religion teaches, whether this