The question; "What are the doctrines of the New church?" - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 Excerpt: ... 46, "I, '8. A. C. 5432.) And throughout his theological writings this illumined teacher vindicates the claims of reason, and insists on the faithful exercise of the understanding in all our religious inquiries. The New Church therefore repudiates and condemns the old dogma that we are to believe blindly, or that, in religious matters, the understanding is to be held in servile subjection to faith. And while it never exalts human reason above Divine revelation, it inculcates, as an imperative duty, the free and faithful exercise of our rational faculties upon whatever claims to be such revelation, and counsels us to accept for religious truth nothing against which our reason revolts, or which fails to commend itself to our rational intuitions. Religion without Asceticism. Prior to the year 1757, asceticism was, in the popular mind, intimately connected with religion, and was looked upon by multitudes of professing Christians as forming a very considerable part of it. Religion was held to be something quite incompatible with any sort of indulgence in worldly pleasures, and more closely allied to austerity and gloom than to cheerfulness and joy. All kinds of amusements--even dancing and the drama--were held to be positively sinful, and unfit, therefore, for religious people to indulge in. But. the New Church teaches a different doctrine on this, as on all other subjects. It believes and teaches that the loves of self and the world are the ruling loves of the natural or unregenerate man; while, in the truly human or regenerate state, the opposite loves--that is, love of the Lord and love of the neighbor--bear rule. It teaches further, that the whole work of regeneration consists, not in uprooting or extinguishing these natural loves, but in bringing them ...