like to hear this, because they commonly held the belief that, "If anyone had bestowed anything for the doctrine of faith in the life of the body he wishes to be rewarded therefor no matter what the end is." 13
To attribute merit to yourself, even real merit, Swedenborg saw as the beginning of danger, the beginning of the black knot of the ego. "The more anyone thinks he merits heaven through such things . . . the more he puts himself away from heaven . . ."
The cardinal point in his ethics was that the Lord was Goodness and Truth, and Goodness and Truth were the Lord. All that man could do "as of himself" was by an effort of will to open his mind and heart to this Goodness and Truth and let that divine union flow in and act through him. "Suffer yourself to be an instrument!" 14 to be employed by this Goodness, he often exclaimed. Shut your mind and heart to the evil promptings of evil spirits, who also want to use you.
Could feelings be compelled into "good" channels? No, Swedenborg emphatically said, but thoughts can yield to reason. That kind of self-compulsion is freedom. He assumed that ethical truths were known; the Bible was there. Hence man could think even if he could not feel that something was wrong or unjust and against divine will. "Man can enter this state freely, for who is not free so to think?" Then, if that became a mental habit, the "inner man" would open and really be able to see what was unjust and wrong, and "to the degree in which he sees this it is dispersed, for nothing can be canceled out until it is seen."
Incidentally, Swedenborg saw evil spirits as serving the above useful purpose: by their smelling a man's evil inclinations, reinforcing them and dragging them to the surface, the man would know that he had such inclinations and could do something about them. And, if he had once really seen himself as he was he would not be left to himself. "The Lord will cause the man not only to see the evil but not to will it and finally to detest it."
The motive of an action was the true test of it. A thousand men could do what seemed like the same deed, yet they would all be as different as the different motives for it, "for the deed is as the will."
But the will was not the same as the deed. "To think and to will
