The Formation of the Church

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1. The presence of the Lord through the perception of His Divine in the Word, and the acknowledgment of His Omnipotence, Omniscience and Omnipresence.

2. The reception of the scientifics and cognitions of the Word and the doctrinals of the Church in the understanding, looking to its separation from the will.

3. The life of repentance, obedience and faith in the Lord, and thence the reformation of the external man, in order that the internal may be opened and the longing for the presence of the Lord’s spirit to save man may be fulfilled.

4. The conjunction with the Lord through the opening and forming of the internal man, and the working thence of His Divine Human through love and faith, and the longing for a new human from Him.

5. The formation of the rational through the affection of the scientifics and cognitions of the Word and the doctrinals of the Church, its subordination to the internal, the perception that Doctrine is spiritual out of celestial origin, and the birth of the new rational and natural in which the Divine of the Lord may be present.

6. The life of charity, acquired by the conjugial of the true of the natural in the sphere of the Lord’s Divine Human with the affections of the true of the Word and of Doctrine in the human things, and the submission to the good of the natural from the Divine Human, and the conjunction with the rational.

7. The perception of the Divine Human out of the rational, and thence the appropriation of the good of love and true of faith in the natural, the submission of the external mind opened to the world to the good and true of the internal opened to heaven, and thus the presence of the Lord’s Kingdom on earth.

(Approved by the Provisional International Council of Priests, May 11, 1956.) 

(Handbook Of The Lord's New Church which Is Nova Hierosolyma, Page 9 - 10)