425. (20) Still there remains the faculty of understanding called rationality, and the faculty of acting called freedom. We have discussed these two faculties that a person has in nos. 264-267 above. A person has these two faculties in order that from being natural he may become spiritual, which is to be regenerated. For, as we said above, it is a person's love that becomes spiritual and is regenerated, and it cannot become spiritual or be regenerated unless it knows through its intellect what is evil and what is good, and consequently what is true and what is false. When it knows this it can choose the one or the other; and if it chooses good, it can through its intellect be informed of the means by which it can arrive at good. The means by which a person can arrive at good have all been provided. To know and understand these means is the function of rationality, and to will and do them is the function of freedom. It is freedom also to will to know, understand and think about them. [2] Of these faculties called rationality and freedom, those people know nothing who believe in accordance with the doctrine of their church that spiritual and theological matters transcend the intellect, and that such matters are to be believed, therefore, without being understood. Those people cannot but deny the existence of the faculty called rationality. Moreover, those who believe in accordance with the doctrine of their church that no one can do good of himself, and that therefore no good springing from any will is to be done for the sake of salvation-those people cannot but deny, from a principle of religion, the existence of either of these faculties that a person has. Therefore people who have confirmed themselves in these opinions are also after death, in accordance with their belief, divested of these two faculties; and instead of being able to enjoy the freedom of heaven, they live in the freedom of hell, and instead of being able to enjoy by virtue of rationality the wisdom of angels, they are caught up in the insanity of hell. Surprisingly, moreover, they profess these two faculties to exist in doing evils and in thinking falsities-not knowing that the exercise of freedom to do evils is slavery,* and that the exercise of rationality to think falsities is irrational. [3] Still, it should rightly be known that these two faculties of freedom and rationality are not a person's own, but are the Lord's in a person; that they cannot be assigned to a person as his own, nor given to a person as his own, but are continually the Lord's in him; and yet that a person never has them taken away. The reason they are not taken away is that a person cannot be saved without them, for without them he cannot be regenerated, as we said above. It is because of this that the church teaches a person that he cannot think truth of himself, nor do good of himself. Yet because a person has no other perception than that he thinks truth of himself and does good of himself, it is clearly apparent that he ought to believe that he thinks truth as though of himself and does good as though of himself. For if he does not believe this, then either he is not thinking truth and not doing good, and so is without religion, or he is thinking truth and doing good on his own, in which case he attributes to himself that which is Divine. That a person ought to think truth and do good as though of himself may be seen from beginning to end in The Doctrine of Life for the New Jerusalem. * Cf. John 8:34.