1. THE FAITH OF THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW CHURCH

A statement of faith, set out in both universal and particular terms, is placed at the beginning to serve as a preface to the book which follows, to be like a doorway leading into a church, and a summary presenting in a short compass what follows at more length. It is called the faith of the new heaven and the new church, because heaven, where the angels are, and the church among men form a single unit, just as the internal and external sides of the personality make up a single individual. This is why a member of the church who possesses the good of love which arises from the truths of faith, and possesses the truths of faith which arise from the good of love, is, so far as the interiors of his mind are concerned, an angel of heaven. Therefore too after dying he comes into heaven, and there enjoys happiness depending upon how far the good and truth are linked. It should be known that in the new heaven, which is at the present time being established by the Lord, this statement of faith serves as its preface, doorway and summary.

305. THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT

Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long and you may prosper upon earth.

This commandment is found in Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 5:16. Honouring your father and mother means in the natural or literal sense honouring one's parents, obeying them, being attached to them, and showing gratitude for the kindnesses they do. These include feeding and clothing their children, and bringing them into the world, so that there they may live civilised and respectable lives; also bringing them into heaven by teaching them the rules of religion. In this way they provide for their temporal prosperity as well as their eternal happiness. They do all this because of the love they have from the Lord, in whose place they act. It also means, in appropriate cases, the honouring of guardians by their wards, if the parents are dead.

In a wider sense this commandment means that one should honour one's king and magistrates, since these provide all with the necessities of life in general, just as parents do in particular cases. In the widest sense the commandment means that one should love one's country, since it feeds and protects one; hence it is called one's fatherland. Honour should be shown by parents to both one's country and its rulers, and they should implant this idea in their children.

378. IX. There is true faith, spurious faith and hypocritical faith.

From its cradle the Christian church began to be attacked and split by schisms and heresies, and in course of time to be torn apart and butchered, very much as we read of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and was surrounded by robbers, who, after stripping and beating him, left him half-dead (Luke 10:30). The result was like the description of that church in Daniel:

Finally upon the bird of abominations desolation, to the point of ending and cutting off, shall be poured drop by drop upon devastation, Daniel 9:27.

and in the Lord's words:

Then the end shall come, when you will see the abomination of desolation predicted by the prophet Daniel, Matthew 24:14-15.

Its fate may be compared with a ship laden with a very valuable cargo, which immediately on leaving harbour is struck by storms and soon afterwards is wrecked and sunk at sea, so that its cargo is partly ruined by water and partly consumed by fish.

[2] The Christian church from its infancy was so tossed and shattered, as is evident from ecclesiastical history, for instance even in the time of the Apostles by Simon, who was of the Samaritan nation, and a practicer of sorcery, as related in The Acts of the Apostles (Acts of the Apostles 8:9ff). Also by Hymenaeus and Philetus, who are mentioned by Paul in his Epistle to Timothy [2 Timothy 2:17]; as also by Nicolas, who gave his name to the Nicolaitans (mentioned in Revelation 2:6 and Acts of the Apostles 6:5), as well as by Cerinthus. After the time of the Apostles many more heretical sects arose, such as the Marcionites, Noetians, Valentinians, Encratites, Cataphrygians, Quartodecimans, Alogians, Cathars, Origenists or Adamantines, Sabellians, Samosatenes, Manichaeans, Meletians and finally Arians. After their times whole regiments of heretical leaders assailed the church, such as the Donatists, Photinians, Acatians or Semiarians, Eunomians, Macedonians, Nestorians, Predestinarians, Papists, Zwinglians, Anabaptists, Schwenckfeldians, Synergists, Socinians, Antitrinitarians, Quakers, Herrenhuters, and many more besides. ¹ Finally these succumbed to Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin, whose dogmas hold the field today.

There are three principal causes of the divisions and separatist movements in the church; first, the failure to understand the Divine Trinity; second, the lack of any proper knowledge of the Lord; third, the assumption that the passion on the cross was the actual process of redemption. Ignorance on these three matters, which are nonetheless the very essentials of faith, and the faith on which the church is based and the reason it is called a church, inevitably results in everything connected with the church being given a sinister twist and steered away until its course is reversed, while still believing that in these circumstances it has the true faith in God and believes all God's truths. The case of these people is similar to those who blindfold their eyes and, while fancying they are walking in a straight line, yet step by step deviate from it, until they are facing the opposite direction, where there are pits into which they fall. But a person who belongs to the church can only be led away from his wanderings and into the way of truth by knowing what true faith is, what spurious faith is, and what hypocritical faith is. The following propositions will therefore be proved:

(i) There is only one true faith, and this is in the Lord God the Saviour Jesus Christ, and is possessed by those who believe Him to be the Son of God, the God of heaven and earth, and one with the Father.

(ii) Spurious faith is any faith which departs from the true and only faith, and is possessed by those who climb up another way and look upon the Lord not as God, but merely as a human being.

(iii) Hypocritical faith is no faith at all.

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