SWEERTS that the regenerate man is in communion with the angels of heaven, and the unregenerate with the spirits of hell; but that no one is condemned for hereditary evil, any further than as he makes it his own by actual life; whence all who die in infancy are saved, special means being provided by the Lord in the other life for that purpose.
"8. That repentance is the first beginning of the Church in man; and that it consists in a man's examining himself both in regard to his deeds and his intentions, in knowing and acknowledging his sins, confessing them before the Lord, supplicating Him for aid, and beginning a new life; that to this end, all evils, whether of affection, of thought, or of life, are to be abhorred and shunned as sins against God, and because they proceed from internal spirits, who in the aggregate are called the Devil and Satan; and that good affections, good thoughts, and good actions are to be cherished and performed, because they are of God and from God; that these things are to be done by man as of himself; nevertheless, under the acknowledgment and belief that it is from the Lord, operating in him and by him; that so far as man shuns evils as sins, so far they are removed, remitted, or forgiven; so far also he does good, not from himself but from the Lord; and in the same degree he loves truth, hath faith, and is a spiritual man; and that the Decalogue teaches what evils are sins."
"9. That Charity, Faith, and Good Works are unitedly necessary to man's salvation; since charity without faith is not spiritual but natural, and faith without charity is not living but dead, and both charity and faith without good works are merely mental and perishable things, because without use or fixedness; and that nothing of faith, of charity, or of good works, is of man, but that all is of the Lord, and all the merit is His alone."
"10. That Baptism and the Holy Supper are sacraments of Divine institution, and are to be permanently observed,—baptism being an external medium of introduction into the Church, and a sign representative of man's purification and regeneration, and the Holy Supper being an external medium of those who receive it worthily, of introduction as to spirit into heaven, and of conjunction with the Lord; of which also it is a sign and seal."
"11. That immediately after death, which is only a putting off of the material body, never to be resumed, man rises again in a spiritual or substantial body, in which he continues to live to eternity; in heaven if his ruling affections, and thence his life, have been good; and in hell if his ruling affections, and thence his life, have been evil."
"12. That now is the time of the Second Advent of the Lord, which is a coming not in Person, but in the power and glory of His Holy Word. That it is attended, like His first coming, with the restoration to order of all things in the spiritual world, where the wonderful Divine operation, commonly expected under the name of the last judgment, has in consequence been performed; and with the preparing of the way for a New Church on the earth—the first Christian Church having spiritually come to its end or consummation through evils of life and errors of doctrine, as foretold by the Lord in the Gospels; and that this New or Second Christian Church, which will be the Crown of all churches, and will stand for ever, is what was representatively seen by John, when he beheld the holy city, New Jerusalem, descending from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."
In Sweden, Germany, France, America, and the British colonies, the faith of Swedenborg has taken partial root. Richer of Nantes has used his eloquence in favour of the new faith; Moet and Tulk have likewise translated Swedenborg into French. The greatest of his German followers is Dr. Tafel, and the greatest of his English disciples is J. J. Garth Wilkinson.