is man's love that becomes
spiritual, and is regenerated; and it cannot become spiritual or be
regenerated unless it knows, by means of its understanding, what evil is
and what good is, and therefore what truth is and what falsity is. When
it knows this it can choose either one or the other; and if it chooses
good it can, by means of its understanding, be instructed about the means
by which to attain to good. All the means by which man is enabled to
attain good are provided. It is by rationality that man is able to know
and understand these means, and by freedom that he is able to will and
to do them. There is also a freedom to will to know, to understand, and
to think these means. Those who hold from church doctrine that things
spiritual or theological transcend the understanding, and are therefore
to be believed apart from the understanding know nothing of these
capacities called rationality and freedom. These cannot do otherwise
than deny that there is a capacity called rationality. Those, too, who
hold from church doctrine that no one is able to do good from himself,
and consequently that good is not to be done from any will to be saved,
cannot do otherwise than deny, from a principle of religion, the existence
of both these capacities which belong to man. Therefore, those who have
confirmed themselves in these things, after death, in agreement with their
faith, are deprived of both these capacities; and in place of heavenly
freedom, in which they might have been, are in infernal freedom, and in
place of angelic wisdom from rationality, in which they might have been,
are in infernal insanity; and what is wonderful, they claim that both
these capacities have place in doing what is evil and thinking what is
false, not knowing that the exercise of freedom in doing what is evil
is slavery, and that the exercise of the reason to think what is false
is irrational. But it is to be carefully noted that these capacities,
freedom and rationality, are neither of them man's, but are of the Lord
in man, and that they cannot be appropriated to man as his; nor indeed,
can they be given to man as his, but are continually of the Lord in man,
and yet are never taken away from man; and this because without them man
cannot be saved, for without them he cannot be regenerated (as has been
said above). For this reason man is instructed by the church that from
himself he can neither think what is true nor do what is good. But
inasmuch as ma