Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 3.djvu/40

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THE SWEDENBORG LIBRARY.

moved thereto only by some external motive, that is, by what partakes of compulsion, while all internal principle is either totally wanting, or is contradictory.

During the course of regeneration, from the principle of freedom with which man is gifted of the Lord, he compels himself; he humbles, yea, he afflicts the rational principle, in order that it may submit itself; and hence he receives a celestial proprium, which is afterwards gradually perfected by the Lord, and is rendered more and more free, till it becomes the affection of good, and of truth derived from good, and he has delight in it. In this delight and in this affection is angelic happiness. This principle of freedom is what the Lord thus speaks of in John: "The truth shall make you free. — If the Son shall make you free, then are ye free indeed," viii. 32, 36.

What this freedom is, is altogether unknown to those who have no conscience; for they make freedom to consist in a liberty and license of thinking and speaking what is false, and of willing and doing what is evil; and in not using any compulsion with themselves herein, or humbling themselves, much less afflicting themselves: when yet this is the very reverse of freedom, as the Lord himself teaches in the same Evangelist: "Whosoever committeth sin, is the slave of sin," (viii. 34.) This servile liberty they receive from infernal spirits who encompass them and infuse it; and while they are in the life of those spirits, they are also in their loves and lusts, which are fanned by an impure

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