( SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD ) - { PT. 4 }

 { PT.  4 } - Thus it was made clear how spiritual life, which is the life of the angels of heaven, is acquired. It shall now be told how that life is destroyed by the faith of the present day. The faith of this day is that it must be believed that God the Father sent His Son, who suffered the cross for our sins, and took away the curse of the law be fulfilling it; and that this faith apart from good works will save everyone, even in the last hour of death. By this faith instilled from childhood and afterward confirmed by preachings, it has come to pass that no one shuns evils from religion, but only from civil and moral law; thus are sins but because they are damaging. Consider, when a man thinks that the Lord suffered for our sins, that He took away the curse of the law, and that merely to believe these things, or to have faith in them without good works saves, whether this is not to regard as of little worth the commandments of the Decalogue, all the life of religion as prescribed in the Word, and further-more all the truths that inculcate charity. Separate these, therefore, and take them away from man, and is there any religion left in him? For religion does not consist in merely thinking this or that. but in willing and doing that which is thought; and there is no religion when willing and doing are separated from thinking.                                                                                          _______________________________________________________