41. Anything that is man's own has no life in it; and when depicted visually it looks like something hard as a bone and black. But anything that comes from the Lord does contain life. It has that which is spiritual and celestial within it, and when depicted visually it looks human and alive. It is perhaps incredible, but nevertheless absolutely true, that every expression, every idea, and every least thought of an angelic spirit is alive. In even the most detailed areas of his thought there is an affection that comes from the Lord, who is life itself. Consequently all that derives from the Lord has life within it, for it contains faith in Him, and is here meant by 'a living creature'. It then has the outward appearance of a body, meant here by that which is moving, or creeping. To man these matters remain arcana, but since the subject here is the living and moving creature, they ought at least to be mentioned here.

2882. The main reason why a person believes that he has no freedom is his awareness that he, of himself, is incapable of doing what is good and thinking what is true. But let him not also believe that anyone ever has or has had of himself any freedom to think what is true and to do what is good. Not even those people had that freedom of themselves who, because they were utterly blameless, were called the image and likeness of God. But all freedom to think the truth of faith and to do a good deed of charity flows in from the Lord. The Lord is Good itself and Truth itself, and consequently their fountainhead. All angels possess that freedom and indeed the perception itself that all that has been said here is so. Inmost angels perceive how much comes from the Lord and how much from themselves, but that insofar as it comes from the Lord they know happiness and insofar as it comes from themselves they do not.