THE APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED
and that He did remove it by means of combats against it and victories over it; thus He subjugated it and reduced it to order and under obedience to Himself. It is a universal of faith that He came into the world that He might glorify His Human which He assumed in the world, that is, might unite it to the Divine from which [it proceeded]; thus He holds hell in order and under obedience to Himself forever. Since this could not have been done but by means of temptations admitted into His Human, even to the last of them, and the last was the passion of the cross, therefore He underwent that temptation. These are the universals of faith concerning the Lord.
"The universal of faith on the part of man is that he should believe in the Lord; for by believing in Him conjunction with Him is effected, by which is salvation. To believe in Him is to have confidence that He saves; and because no one can have this confidence but he that lives well, therefore this also is meant by believing in Him."
Such is Swedenborg's own summary of the doctrine for the new age of the Christian Church—the "True Christian Religion"—which it was his mission to draw from the letter of the Word
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