1853. That 'you will come to your fathers in peace' means that nothing of the goods and truths will suffer harm becomes clear from the meaning of 'fathers', also of 'coming to one's fathers', as well as of 'peace'. In the internal sense 'fathers' here has the same meaning as daughters and sons taken together. That 'daughters' means goods and 'sons' truths has been shown already in 489-491, 533, 1147, and therefore 'fathers' means those things meant by daughters and sons together. 'Coming to one's fathers' is passing over from the life of the body into the life of the spirit, or from the world into the next life. 'In peace' means that he will have lost nothing, and thus that nothing will suffer harm, for when a person passes into the next life he does not lose any of the things that he possesses as man. He retains and has with him every single thing except the body which has hampered the interior exercise of his capabilities. The fact that here, not death, or passing over to one's fathers, is meant by death, becomes clear from what follows immediately below.

6628. It has been shown in various places in the explanations given already that teachings about charity were the teachings in the Ancient Churches, and that these teachings linked all the Churches together and in so doing made one Church out of many. For they recognized as members of the Church all those people who led a good and charitable life, and they called them their brothers, no matter how much otherwise they differed from them in truths, which at the present day are called matters of faith. People informed one another about those truths, and this was one of their charitable works. Neither were they annoyed if one person did not go along with the opinion of another; they knew that everyone accepts the truth insofar as he is governed by good.