such were these angelic spirits[aaa].  We told them that few on our Earth have interior perception, because in their youth they learn truths, and do not practise them.  For man has two faculties, which are called the understanding and the will; they who admit truths no further than into the memory, and thence in some degree into the understanding, but not into the life, that is, into the will, these, inasmuch as they cannot be in any enlightenment or interior sight from the Lord, say that those truths ought to be believed, or that man ought to have faith in them; and they also reason about them whether they be truths or not; nay, they are not willing that they should be perceived by any interior sight, or by any enlightenment by the understanding.  They say this, because truths with them are without light from heaven, and to those who see without light from heaven, falsities may appear as truths, and truths as falsities.  Hence so great blindness has fallen on many on our Earth, that although a man does not practise truths or live according to them, they say nevertheless that he may be saved by faith alone, as if a man were not man from the life and according to it, but from the knowledge of such things as belong to faith, apart from the life.  We afterwards conversed with them concerning the Lord, concerning love to Him, love towards the neighbour, and regeneration; saying, that loving the Lord consists in loving the precepts which are from Him, that is, in living according to them from love[bbb]; that love towards the neighbour consists in willing good and thence doing good to a fellow-citizen, to one’s country, to the church, to the Lord’s kingdom, not for the selfish end of being seen or acquiring merit, but from the affection of good[ccc].  Concerning regeneration, we observed that they who are being regenerated by the Lord, and who commit truths immediately to the life, come into an interior perception concerning them; but that those who receive truths first in the memory, and afterwards will them and do them, are those who are in faith; for they act from faith, which is then called conscience.  These things, they said, they perceived to be so, and therefore perceived also what faith is.  I conversed with them by means of spiritual ideas, by which such subjects may be exhibited and comprehended in light.

[Footnote aaa:  Heaven is distinguished into two kingdoms, one of which is called the celestial kingdom, the other the spiritual kingdom, nos. 3887, 4138.  The angels in the celestial kingdom have vastly more knowledge and wisdom than the angels in the spiritual kingdom, no. 2718.  The celestial angels do not think and speak from faith, like the spiritual angels, but from an internal perception that a thing is so, nos. 202, 597, 607, 784, 1121, 1387, 1398, 1442, 1919, 7680, 7877, 8780.  The celestial angels say only concerning the truths of faith, Yea, yea, or Nay, nay, but the spiritual angels reason whether a thing be so or not so, nos. 202, 337, 2715, 3246, 4448, 9166.]