CHAPTER I

A CHURCH IN THE COURSE OF TIME TURNS AWAY FROM THE GOOD OF CHARITY, AND WHILE DOING SO TURNS TOWARDS FALSITIES OF FAITH, AND SO DIES AWAY 1. There is a Church in the heavens and a Church on earth, and they make a one, like the internal and the external with a man. 2. The Church in either world is together before the Lord as one man, and appears so before angels. 3. Hence a Church may be compared to a man who is first an infant, then a youth, afterwards a man, and finally an old man. 4. While it is an infant a Church is in the good of charity, while a youth and a man it is in the truths of faith from that good, and when an old man it is in the marriage of charity and faith. 5. When a Church is such, and continues to be such, it lasts for ever, but it is otherwise if it recedes from the good of charity of its infancy, 6. If a Church recedes from the good of charity of its infancy, it is in the dark about truths, and falls into falsities as a blind man falls into pits. 7. The four essentials of a Church are the recognition of God, the recognition of the goods of charity, the recognition of the verities of faith, and a life in accordance with them. 8. When a Church recedes from charity it recedes also from those four essentials. At the same time falsities in regard to God, charity, faith and worship, flow in. 9. These flow in into the Church's leaders and from them into the people, as from a head into its body. 10. There are two reasons why falsities flowing into the leaders flow out again from them: one is the love of having dominion, arising from the love of self, the other is understanding things from one's proprium** and not from Sacred Scripture. 11. When that is the case, from a single falsity there flow forth falsities in a continual series, and this goes on until there is nothing of truth remaining. 12. When Sacred Scripture is applied in confirmation of them, it is then completely falsified and so the Church perishes. * It would appear from the copy made by Johansen that before proceeding with this section Swedenborg made some notes in the MS. A title for the section on "The Holy Spirit" was written and scored out. This was followed by a draft of chapter headings for that section, which we have included in a footnote at the beginning of that section, where it evidently belongs. See n. 32. Then, immediately after the heading "Redemption", the following general observations are found in both MS. copies. N. leaves them unnumbered and marks them as "Annotations in the Margin", while Sk. calls them "Summaries" and numbers them as here:

1 . Redemption itself consisted in subjugating the hells and putting the heavens into order, and thus preparing for a new spiritual Church. 2. Without that redemption no man could have been saved, nor could any angel have continued in his state of happiness. 3. The Lord redeemed not only men but angels as well. 4. Redemption was a work purely Divine 5. This redemption could not have been effected except by God Incarnate. 6. The passion of the cross was the final temptation which He as the greatest Prophet endured, and by means of which also He might truly subjugate the hells and glorify His Human; thus it was a means of redemption, but was not redemption. 7. [The belief] that the passion of the cross was redemption itself is a fundamental error of the Church. 8. That error, together with the error about three Divine Persons from eternity, has perverted the whole Church to such a degree that there is no spiritual residue of it remaining. The errors that have arisen from the present-day [belief] that redemption is the passion of the cross are to be enumerated. ** The Latin word proprium means "what is one's own". Swedenborg uses it in a special sense involving what is of the self.