s from innocence, and from a nearer
reception of innocence, and thereby a more present preception of it in
man's self: for the spiritual are such so far as they partake of
innocence. But spiritual fathers and mothers, after they have sipped the
sweet of innocence with their infants, love their children very
differently from what natural fathers and mothers do. The spiritual love
their children from their spiritual intelligence and moral life; thus
they love them from the fear of God and actual piety, or the piety of
life, and at the same time from affection and application to uses
serviceable to society, consequently from the virtues and good morals
which they possessed. From the love of these things they are principally
led to provide for, and minister to, the necessities of their children;
therefore if they do not observe such things in them, they alienate
their minds from them and do nothing for them but so far as they think
themselves bound in duty. With natural fathers and mothers the love of
infants is indeed grounded also in innocence; but when the innocence is
received by them, it is entwined around their own love, and consequently
the love of their infants from the latter, and at the same time from the
former, kissing, embracing, and dangling them, hugging them to their
bosoms, and fawning upon and flattering them beyond all bounds,
regarding them as one heart and soul with themselves; and afterwards,
when they have passed the state of infancy even to boyhood and beyond
it, in which state innocence is no longer operative, they love them not
from any fear of God and actual piety, or the piety of life, nor from
any rational and moral intelligence they may have; neither do they
regard, or only very slightly, if at all, their internal affections, and
thence their virtues and good morals, but only their externals, which
they favor and indulge. To these externals their love is directed and
determined: hence also they close their eyes to their vices, excusing,
and favoring them. The reason of this is, because with such parents the
love of their offspring is also the love of themselves; and this love
adheres to the subject outwardly, without entering into it, as self does
not enter into itself.

406. The quality of the love of infants and of the love of children with
the spiritual and with the natural, is evidently discerned from them
after death; for most fathers, when they come into another life,
recollect their chil