177. No one can be regenerated unless he knows what concerns his new, that is, spiritual life. These things are the truths he ought to believe and the good deeds he ought to do. The truths concern faith, the deeds charity. No one can know this by himself, for he grasps only such things as have been apprehensible by the senses. From these he has acquired some sort of illumination, called natural illumination, which allows him to see nothing but what concerns the world and himself, and he is blind to what concerns heaven and God. This he has to learn by revelation; as for example, the fact that the Lord, who is God from eternity, came into the world to save the human race; that He has all power in heaven and on earth; that the whole of faith and the whole of charity, so all truth and good, are from Him; that there is a heaven and a hell; that one is destined to live for ever in heaven if one has behaved well, in hell if badly.