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.

107. If there were not this receptivity on a person’s part, and thought then as though of himself, nothing could be said about faith, for faith comes not from man. A person would otherwise be like straw in the wind, or like someone standing seemingly lifeless, with mouth open and hands hanging down, awaiting influx, thinking nothing and doing nothing in matters having to do with his salvation. He is, indeed, not the actor in these matters, but still he is the reactor, reacting as though of himself.

But this will be presented in a still clearer light in treatises titled Angelic Wisdom.