4263. CONCERNING CHARITY AND CONSCIENCE. Speaking with spirits and angels concerning charity and conscience, it was perceived that the case is thus: that whoever is in charity and in true conscience may obey all the precepts of the Decalogue and know them, as it were, from himself as being in all their particulars impressed upon him, so that he has no need to learn them; that he may also know all the precepts pertaining to civil kingdoms, and how to be a good citizen wherever he is, for all such precepts are contrary to hatreds, revenges, adulteries, thefts; moreover that those who are in charity and conscience possess, as it were, from themselves all the knowledges of faith, whether goodness and truth pertains to them, or what the true and the good is; again, that they are able, as it were, from themselves to write whole books, and without masters to frame entire systems of doctrine; that they can preach, and their preaching be in accordance with whatever is true and good. Those, on the other hand, who are not in charity, owe everything to memory and to preconceived principles, and yet what they bring forth is false and evil. These things I have conversed upon twice or thrice with spirits, and it was perceived and acknowledged by them that all things are embraced in charity, whence it follows that the same holds good of true conscience. - 1749, May 7.