918. The fact that going out of the ark also involves a condition of freedom can be seen from remarks just above at verse 16 about going out of the ark [§905].

The nature of a spiritual person's freedom is indicated by the fact that the Lord governs such people through conscience. Those whose conscience governs them, or who act in accord with their conscience, act freely. Nothing repels them more than violating their conscience. Acting against conscience is hell to them; obeying conscience is heaven. From this anyone can see that the latter is freeing.

The Lord governs spiritual people through a conscience that shows them what is good and true. This conscience, as noted [§§310:2, 393, 875:3], is formed in the intellectual part of their mind and so is separate from the contents of their will. Since conscience is totally separate from the urges of our will, we obviously can never do anything good on our own. And since all religious truth comes from religious good, we obviously never think anything true on our own, only under the Lord's power. The appearance that we do it on our own is only an appearance. Moreover, as this is how things work, a person who is truly spiritual also acknowledges and believes it.

From this it stands to reason that the spiritual person's conscience is a gift from the Lord, that it is like a new will, and therefore that the person who has been created anew is supplied with a new will and from this a new intellect.

393. Before I explain the symbolism of these things on the inner plane, the nature of faith needs to be understood.

The people of the earliest church were such that they acknowledged no other faith than faith from love, so much so that they did not even want to say the word faith. Everything involved in faith they subsumed under the idea of love from the Lord. Heavenly angels (described above [§202]) are the same way.

It was foreseen, though, that the human race would not maintain this character but would split faith off from love for the Lord and make it into a doctrine of its own. So it was also provided that faith would indeed be split off but in such a way that through it, or through a knowledge of it, the Lord would give us a heart for charity. In this way, knowledge, or "hearing the message," would come first. ¹ Then through that knowledge or hearing the Lord would give us the gift of charity — that is, love for our neighbor, and mercy. The charity acquired by this means not only would be inseparable from faith but also would constitute faith's principal concern.

Afterward conscience took the place of the perception that the earliest church had enjoyed. Conscience, built up through the faith that is attached to charity, would speak from within, not explaining what was true but affirming that a particular thing was true, and this because the Lord had said so in the Word. For the most part, the churches that came after the Flood — including the early [Christian] church (the first church following the Lord's Coming) — adopted this character.

The same criterion distinguishes spiritual angels from heavenly angels.

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