520. IV. Man is born with a tendency to every kind of evil, and if he does not partially remove evils by repentance, he remains subject to them, and if so cannot be saved.

It is well known in the church that man has by birth a tendency to evils, and so from his mother's womb he is nothing but evil. This fact has become well known because the councils and leaders of the churches have laid it down that Adam's sin has been transmitted to all his descendants; and that this is the sole reason why every person after Adam has been damned along with him, this being something inherent in everyone from birth. Moreover, much of the church's teaching is based upon this assertion. For instance, it is taught that the washing of regeneration called baptism was instituted by the Lord to remove this sin; this was the reason for the Lord's coming; faith in His merit is the means by which it is removed; and there are many more doctrines based by the churches on this assertion.

[2] What has been shown above (in 466ff) is enough to prove that there is no hereditary evil from that source. It was shown that Adam was not the first human being, but Adam and his wife are used as representatives to describe the first church in this world; the Garden of Eden describes its wisdom, the tree of life its looking to the Lord who was to come, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil its looking to itself instead of the Lord. ARCANA CAELESTIA, published in London, proved by many parallel passages in the Word that the first chapters of Genesis are a representative description of this first church. Once this is understood and accepted, the view so far cherished collapses, that evil from this origin is innate in man from his parents, when in fact it has a quite different origin. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil exist for everyone, and their being said to be placed in a garden means that he has freedom to choose whether he turns towards the Lord or away from Him. This was fully proved in the chapter on free will [463-508].

463. CHAPTER EIGHT

FREE WILL

Before preparing to set down the teaching of the new church on free will, I must preface my remarks with an account of the views on this subject expressed by the present-day church in its theological books. But for this anyone of sound reason and religion might think that it is not worth while writing anything new on the subject. He might say to himself: 'Is there anyone who does not know that man has free will in spiritual matters? What else would be the point of priests preaching that people should believe in God, be converted, live in accordance with the commandments in the Word, fight against the lusts of the flesh, and turn themselves into new creations,' and much more of the same sort. He cannot therefore help thinking that these expressions would be merely empty verbiage, if there were no element of free will in matters affecting salvation, and it would be madness to deny this, as being contrary to common sense. Yet the present-day church goes in the opposite direction and banishes it from its buildings, as is evident from the book called the Formula of Concord, a book the Evangelicals swear to uphold, as the following extracts will show. The Reformed churches have similar teaching and thus belief about free will, so the situation is similar throughout the Christian world, and consequently in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, England and Holland, as is clear from their theological books. The following passages are transcribed from the Formula of Concord, published at Leipzig in 1756.