SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD - { PT. 46 }

 SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD  -  { PT.  46 } - He who refrains from thefts, understood in a broad sense, and even shuns them from any other cause than religion and for the sake of eternal life, is not cleansed of them; for only by such refraining is heaven opened. For it is through heaven that the Lord removes evils in man, as through heaven He removes the hells. For example, there are higher and lower managers of property, merchants, judges, officers of every kind, and workmen, who refrain thefts, that is, from unlawful modes of gain and usury, and who shun these, but only to secure reputation and thus honor and gain, and because of civil an d moral laws, in a word, from some natural love or natural fear, thus from merely external love or natural fear, thus from merely external constraints, and not from religion; but the interiors of such are full of thefts and robberies and these burst forth when external constraints are removed from them, as takes place with everyone after death, Their sincerity and rectitude is nothing but a mask, a disguise, and a deceit ( A.E., n. 972 ) So far then as the various kinds and species if theft are removed, and the more they are removed, the kinds and species of goods to which they by opposition correspond enter and occupy their place; and these have reference in general to what is sincere, right and just.