hrough and not affect; thus an angel would not be an angel, nor would man
be a man; he would be merely like something inanimate. From all this it
can be seen that there must be an ability to reciprocate that there may
be conjunction.

116. It shall now be explained how it comes that an angel perceives and
feels as his, and thus receives and retains that which yet is not his;
for, as was said above, an angel is not an angel from what is his, but
from those things which he has from the Lord. The essence of the matter
is this:- Every angel has freedom and rationality; these two he has to
the end that he may be capable of receiving love and wisdom from the Lord.
Yet neither of these, freedom nor rationality, is his, they are the Lord's
in him. But since the two are intimately conjoined to his life, so
intimately that they may be said to be joined into it, they appear to
be his own. It is from them that he is able to think and will, and to
speak and act; and what he thinks, wills, speaks, and does from them,
appears as if it were from himself. This gives him the ability to
reciprocate, and by means of this conjunction is possible. Yet so far as
an angel believes that love and wisdom are really in him, and thus lays
claim to them for himself as if they were his, so far the angelic is not
in him, and therefore he has no conjunction with the Lord; for he is not
in truth, and as truth makes one with the light of heaven, so far he cannot
be in heaven; for he thereby denies that he lives from the Lord, and
believes that he lives from himself, and that he therefore possesses
Divine essence. In these two, freedom and rationality, the life which
is called angelic and human consists. From all this it can be seen that
for the sake of conjunction with the Lord, - the angel has the ability
to reciprocate, but that this ability, in itself considered, is not his
but the Lord's. From this it is, that if he abuses his ability to
reciprocate, by which he perceives and feels as his what is the Lord's,
which is done by appropriating it to himself he falls from the angelic
state. That conjunction is reciprocal, the Lord Himself teaches
(John 14:20-24; 154-6); also that the conjunction of the Lord with man
and of man with the Lord, is in those things of the Lord that are called
His words (John 15:7).

117. Some are of the opinion that Adam was in such liberty or freedom of
choice as to be able to love God and be wise from himself, and that this