Book Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE DOOR TO THE DOCTRINE OF CHARITY. FIRST THING OF CHARITY IS TO REMOVE AND THE SECOND, TO DO GOOD THAT IS OF USE TO THE NEIGHBOR. In the doctrine of charity this occupies the highest place: that the first thing of charity is, not to do evil to the neighbor; and to do good to him occupies the second place. This is, as it were, the door to the doctrine of charity. It is known that evil resides in every man's will from his.birth; and as all evil regards man as near itself or far from itself, and also society and one's country, it follows that hereditary evil is evil against the neighbor in every degree. A man may see from reason itself, that so far us. the evil resident in his will is not removed, the good that he does is impregnated with that evil; for evil is then within the good, like a kernel in its shell or like marrow in a bone. Therefore although the good that is done by such a man seems to be good, still intrinsically it is not good; for it is 'ike a healthy-looking shell containing a worm-eaten 'ite ernel, and like a white almond rotten inside, from '' -r ' vj jich streaks of rottenness extend even to the surface. An evil will and good deeds are essentially two op- posites. For evil comes from hatred of the neighbor, and good from love to him; or evil is the neighbor s enemy and good is his friend. The two cannot exist in one mind, that is, evil in the internal man and good in the external; if they do, the good in the external is like a wound superficially healed, within which there is putrid matter. Man is then like a tree with a decayed root, which still produces fruit that outwardly looks like well-flavored and useful fruit, but is inwardly offensive and useless. He is also like scoriae, which, being bright on the surface and beautifully co...