6050. A CONVERSATION WITH ENGLISHMEN ABOUT THEIR PREACHERS. I spoke with Englishmen who were in a society of heaven, and, in fact, about their preachers. They stated that they are not fond of the elegance of their sermons, when these are doctrinal, because they do not know or understand what they say. The sermons have a fine sound, and so please those who are not in the spiritual love of truth, but not others. They tell them to leave out such things, since they do not learn anything; for they speak so that they [the hearers] suppose that such things are true, but yet do not know whether they are true; especially when the subject is the effort to do good. They inquire of them what they mean by this, whether the effort is merely latent, or whether it is manifest. They say that it is latent. They rejoin that they are aware of this, because the Lord operates many things in secret; but does He, or does He not, operate thus manifestly? Then the preacher dares not say anything else but that it also occurs manifestly, but that this is because the affection of doing inflows. When they inquire, further, whether therefore good ought to be done as of oneself, or not, this they also conceal under the oracular statement that man must take care not to act from himself, and thus that so far as it is of man it is not good. When asked whether man may act as of himself, the answer is that the case is similar. They were told, however, that, if man does not act as of himself, he receives nothing, and there is no reception, and hence no appropriation. But here they stop, when speaking to those who have a spiritual idea; and [the latter] carry their point. But preachers who have confirmed themselves in this, in the world, do not recede from their doctrine, inasmuch as they teach in such a manner that the hearers are not able to think that it is or that it is not so; consequently, their discourse is ineffectual. Wherefore, those preachers are at length removed, and sent among those who are in faith alone, who have nothing of truth or of good in the life, but only in thought, together with pride of scholarship. They afterwards teach that there is manifest operation; but not manifest operation and when they speak of operation, they again so involve, adjust and connect their arcana, that persons scarcely know other than that they mean manifest operation, but still they do not mean that.