618. XII. REGENERATION IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT TRUTHS, BY WHICH FAITH IS FORMED AND WITH WHICH CHARITY CONJOINS ITSELF. There are three means whereby man is regenerated, the Lord, faith, and charity. These three would lie hidden like the most costly jewels buried in the earth, if Divine truths from the Word did not reveal them. They would indeed be hidden from those who deny man's cooperation even if they were to read the Word a hundred or a thousand times, although they there stand forth in clear light. As concerns the Lord, who that is confirmed in the prevailing faith sees there with open eyes the declarations that He and the Father are one, that He is the God of heaven and earth, that it is the will of the Father that men should believe in the Son, with innumerable other statements of the same kind respecting the Lord in both Testaments? They do not see because they are not in truths, and consequently not in the light in which subjects of this kind can be seen; and if light were given, falsities would extinguish it, and these truths would then escape their attention like something wholly erased, or like underground drains which are trodden upon and passed over. These things are said that it may be known that without truths this first thing in regeneration cannot be seen. [2] As to faith, neither is that possible without truths; because faith and truth make one thing; for the good of faith is like a soul, truths constituting its body. To say therefore that a man believes or has faith, when he is ignorant of all of its truths, is like taking the soul out of the body, and talking with it when thus invisible. Moreover, all the truths that make up the body of faith emit light and enlighten, and render the features of faith visible. It is the same with charity; this emits heat with which the light of truth conjoins itself, as heat does with light in the world in the time of spring, from the conjunction of which the animals and vegetables of the earth return to their prolifications. [3] It is the same with spiritual heat and light; these in like manner conjoin themselves in man when he is in the truths of faith and at the same time in the goods of charity. For as said above in the chapter on Faith, from each particular truth of faith there flows forth a light that enlightens, and from each particular good of charity a heat that enkindles. It is also there said that spiritual light in its essence is intelligence, and spiritual heat in its essence is love; and that the Lord alone conjoins these two in man when He regenerates him. For the Lord said: The words that I speak unto you are spirit, and are life (John 6:63). Believe in the light, that ye may be sons of light. I am come a light into the world (John 12:36, 46). The Lord is the Sun in the spiritual world; this is the source of all spiritual light and heat; that light enlightens, and that heat enkindles; and by the conjunction of the two the Lord vivifies and regenerates man.