146. (iii) THE DIVINE POWER AND ACTIVITY MEANT BY THE SENDING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, WITH THE CLERGY TAKES THE PARTICULAR FORM OF ENLIGHTENMENT AND INSTRUCTION.

The activities of the Lord listed in the preceding section, reformation, regeneration, renewal, quickening, sanctification, justification, cleansing, the forgiveness of sins and finally salvation, are sent by the Lord to affect the clergy as well as laymen, and they are received by those who are in the Lord and have the Lord in them (John 6:56; 14:20; 15:4-5). The reason why enlightenment and instruction are especially given to the clergy is that these things are a part of their duties, and that ordination into the ministry carries these with it. The clergy also believe that, when zeal leads them to preach, they are inspired like the Lord's disciples, on whom He breathed and said:

Receive the Holy Spirit, John 20:22; see also Mark 13:11.

Some even assert that they have felt it flowing into them. But they should take extreme care not to be convinced that the zeal, by which many are carried away while preaching, is God working in their hearts. For similar or even more ardent zeal is felt by fanatics and also by those who hold the falsest doctrines, even by those who care not a whit for the Word, but worship nature as god, and pack faith and charity away in the knapsack on their backs. When they are preaching and teaching they hang it round their necks like a sort of second stomach, from which they bring up and regurgitate such things as they know will appeal to their listeners' appetites.

Zeal considered in itself is an outburst of heat in the natural man. If it has the love of truth in it, then it is like the holy fire which affected the Apostles, as we read in Acts:

There appeared divided among them tongues as it were of fire, which settled upon each of them; and they were thus all filled with the Holy Spirit, Acts of the Apostles 2:3-4.

But if that zeal or outburst of heat has the love of falsity lurking within it, then it is like fire smouldering in a log, which bursts out and sets fire to the house. Do you, reader, if you deny the holiness of the Word and the divinity of the Lord, please take your knapsack off your back and open it, which you are free to do at home, and then you will see. I know that those from Babel, who are meant by Lucifer in Isaiah, on entering a church, and even more when climbing into a pulpit, especially those who call themselves members of the Society of Jesus, are carried away by a zeal which in many cases comes from a hellish love; and this makes them cry out more violently and heave deeper sighs from their chests, than those whose zeal comes from heavenly love. There are two more ways in which the spirit works upon the clergy, which will be mentioned later (155).

611. X. In so far as a person is regenerated, so far are his sins removed; this removal is the forgiveness of sins.

The reason why so far as a person is regenerated, so far are his sins removed, is that regeneration consists in controlling the flesh so that it does not take control, in taming the former man and his lusts so that he cannot rise again and destroy the faculty of understanding; for if this is destroyed, there is no further possibility of the person being reformed. This reformation cannot occur, unless the person's spirit, which is above the flesh, is instructed and advanced towards perfection. No one, whose understanding is still unimpaired, can fail to conclude from this that such events cannot take place in an instant, but do so one after another, just as a person is conceived, carried in the womb, born and brought up, in the sequence demonstrated above. The properties belonging to the flesh or the former man are inherent from birth. They build the first home for his mind, the dwelling-place of lusts, which are like wild beasts in their cages. They live at first in the forecourts, and little by little creep into the rooms of that house below ground level, and afterwards climb the stairs and make rooms for themselves. This happens by stages as the child grows, becomes a boy and then a youth; then he begins to use his own understanding to think and his own will to act.

[2] Anyone can see that a house built thus far in the mind, where lusts like ochim, ghoim ¹ and satyrs hold hands to dance, cannot be destroyed in a moment, and a new house built in its place. Of course the lusts holding hands and so disporting themselves must first be banished, and new desires for good and truth be brought in to replace the lusts for evil and falsity. Any wise person can see that such things cannot take place in an instant from the single consideration, that every evil is the product of countless lusts, resembling a fruit that below the surface is full of maggots with black heads and white bodies. Evils too, he will realise, are numerous and closely linked, like the offspring of a spider just hatched from its belly. So unless one evil after another is brought out, and the process continues until the link is broken, a person cannot become new. These considerations have been presented in order to make it known that in so far as anyone is regenerated, so far are his sins removed.

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