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].