True Christian Religion (Chadwick) n. 420

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420. VII

Charity and good deeds are two different things, as are wishing well and doing good.

Everyone has an internal and an external. The internal is what is called the internal man, the external is what is called the external man. Anyone who is unaware of what the internal and external man are, might think that the internal man is the one who thinks and wills, and the external man is the one who speaks and acts. Admittedly speech and action are functions of the external man, and thought and will of the internal man; but they are not essentially what constitute the external and internal man. As commonly understood it is a person's mind which is the internal man; but the mind itself is divided into two zones, and the one which is higher and interior is spiritual, the other which is lower and exterior is natural. The spiritual mind concentrates on the spiritual world and the objects of its attention are the contents of that world, either the kind of things to be found in heaven, or the kind to be found in hell; both heaven and hell are part of the spiritual world. The natural mind, however, concentrates upon the natural world, and the objects of its attention are the contents of that world, whether good or evil. Every action and utterance by a person comes directly from the lower zone of his mind, and indirectly from the higher zone, since the lower zone of the mind is closer to the bodily senses, and the higher zone is more distant from them. Human beings have this division of the mind, because they were created to be simultaneously spiritual and natural, and thus not animals but human beings.

[2] This shows plainly that a person who looks to the world and himself in the first place is an external man, because he is natural not only in body but also in mind, while a person who looks in the first place to what belongs to heaven and the church is an internal man, because he is spiritual in both mind and body. He is spiritual in body too, because his actions and utterances come from his higher mind, which is spiritual, by way of the lower mind, which is natural. For it is well known that effects come from the body, and the causes which produce them from the mind, and the cause is wholly in the effect. This division of the human mind is obvious from the fact that a person can put on a pretence, or play the part of a toady, hypocrite and actor; he can assent to another's statements, while yet laughing at them. The laughter comes from his higher mind, the assent from the lower.


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