1. Every Religion Is a Way of Life, and Its Life Is the Doing of Good

Everyone with any religion knows and acknowledges that someone who lives right is saved, and that someone who does not live right is damned. For he knows and acknowledges that someone who lives right, thinks right, not only about God, but also about the neighbor; but not so someone who does not live right.

A person’s life is his love, and what a person loves he not only freely does, but also freely thinks. We say therefore that his life is the doing of good, because doing right accompanies his thinking right. If these two do not go together, they do not constitute a person’s life.

But this we will show in the following pages.

27. 3. If a person gains much knowledge and wisdom, and does not refrain from evils as being sins, he is still not wise. The reason for this is the same as that before, that he has gained his wisdom on his own and not from the Lord. So for example, if he knows the doctrine of his church and all its particulars in fine detail; if he knows how to use the Word and reasoned arguments to defend them; if he knows the doctrines of all the churches from centuries ago, and together with them the edicts of all the councils; indeed, if he knows truths and moreover sees and understands them; for instance, if he knows the meaning of faith, charity, piety, repentance and the forgiveness of sins, of regeneration, baptism and Holy Supper, of the Lord, and of redemption and salvation; still he is not wise if he does not refrain from evils as being sins. For they are lifeless concepts, because they are matters only of his intellect and not at the same time of his will; and their nature being such, they perish in time, for the reason discussed in no. 15 above. After death the person himself also dismisses them, because they are not in harmony with his will’s love.

Still, the concepts are most necessary because they teach a person how to live, and when he lives them, then they become alive in him, and not before.