9. I have had much discourse with English priests concerning faith, among whom also were bishops. Because it was according to their doctrine, they insisted that faith alone produces the endeavor to good. But to the question, whether by endeavor they meant man's manifest will, this they were unwilling to admit; because everything that proceeds from man's manifest will is in itself not good, and is meritorious; wherefore by endeavor they meant an internal operation, about which the understanding knows little: consequently that such endeavor is inwardly in faith, and that it is not manifested openly except by an inclination to doing. In this opinion they were so tenacious, and also in this, that faith produces the good which is called charity, that they were not willing to be led, although it was told them from heaven, that faith does not produce anything of charity, but that charity produces faith; and that faith before charity is not living faith, but only knowledge; and that a man ought to do good as of himself, and that otherwise nothing of good is inrooted and implanted: but to this they shut their ears. When they were told that one of the most talented of them* had thought out reasons and ways, even to a hundred, to confirm that faith produces charity, and that he had wandered through each way, as is done in the spiritual world by thinking that it is so; but still, when he came to the end of the way, he saw from enlightenment given him that he had been wandering, which he also as often confessed. Also when their solemn exhortation at the Holy Supper was read before them, wherein these things are said,** . . . they thought, but were unwilling to say, that this is said for the laity, and that the doctrine is for the clergy: wherefore it was announced to them, that life according to the faith of the laity saves; but life according to the doctrine of the clergy condemns: since in the faith of the clergy there is no life, and in their life there is no faith; but there is in the faith and life of the laity. * The author of The Whole Duty of Man. See SE 5058; CLJ 46. ** The Exhortation is not quoted here. See T 722:3.