Last Judgment (Whitehead) n. 37

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37. That within the church at this day, faith is so rare, that it can scarcely be said to exist at all, was made evident, from many both learned and simple, whose spirits were explored after death, as to what their faith had been in the world; and it was found, that every one of them supposed faith to be merely to believe, and to persuade himself that it is so; and that the more learned of them placed it entirely in believing, with trust or confidence that they are saved by the Lord's passion and His intercession, and that scarcely one among them knew that there is no faith, if there is no charity, or love yea, they did not know what charity to the neighbor is, nor the difference between thinking and willing. For the most part they turned their backs upon charity, saying that charity effects nothing, but faith only. When it was said to them, that charity and faith are one, like the will and the understanding, and that charity has its seat in the will, and faith in the understanding, and that to separate the one from the other, is like separating the will from the understanding, this they did not understand. Whence it was made evident to me that scarcely any faith exists at the present day. This also was shown them to the life. They who were in the persuasion that they had faith, were led to an angelic society, where genuine faith existed, and when they were made to communicate with it, they clearly perceived that they had no faith, which afterwards moreover, they confessed in the presence of many. The same thing was also shown by other means to those who had made a profession of faith, and had thought they believed, without having lived the life of faith, which is charity; and every one of them confessed that they had no faith, because they had nothing of it in the life of their spirits, but only in some thought extrinsic to it, whilst they lived in the natural world.


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