would be profane. No one can serve two lords without hating one and
loving the other, as the Lord teaches in Matthew 6 : 24.
Various comparisons can illustrate the fact that there is no faith
where evil exists. For example, evil is like fire. Hellfire is nothing but a
love for evil. Evil consumes faith as if it were straw, and reduces it and
everything related to it to ash.
Evil dwells in pitch darkness. Faith dwells in light. Evil uses falsities
to extinguish faith, just as pitch darkness extinguishes light. Evil is as
black as ink. Faith is as white as snow and as clear as water. Evil blackens
faith the way ink blackens snow or water.
Here are other comparisons: evil cannot be united to truth that is
related to faith any more than a rotten smell can be an ingredient in a
sweet perfume, or urine can be an ingredient in a flavorful wine. Evil and
faith cannot coexist any more than a reeking corpse and a living person
can share the same bed. Evil and faith cannot live with each other any
more than a wolf can live in a sheepfold, a hawk in a dovecote, or a fox in
a henhouse.
(b) All people in Christianity who are dismissive of the Lord and the 384
Word have no faith, no matter how morally they behave or how rationally
they speak, teach, or write, even if their subject is faith.This follows as a
conclusion from everything that has just been said: that the one only true
faith is faith in the Lord, from the Lord; that any faith that is not faith in
him and from him is earthly faith, not spiritual faith; and that faith that
is merely earthly lacks the essence of faith inside it.
Faith comes from the Word. It has no other source, because the Word
is from the Lord and therefore the Lord himself is in the Word. This is
why the Lord says that he is the Word (John 1 : 1 , 2 ). As a result, people
who are dismissive of the Word are also dismissive of the Lord, for the two
are connected as one thing. It also follows that those who are dismissive of
either the Lord or the Word are dismissive of the church, since the church
comes from the Lord through the Word.
Furthermore, those who are dismissive of the church are outside
heaven, because the church is what brings people into heaven. People who
are outside heaven are among the damned, and the damned have no faith.
People who are dismissive of the Lord and the Word have no faith no
matter how morally they behave or how rationally they speak, teach, or
write, even if their subject is faith, because they do not live a spiritual
moral life and they do not have a spiritual rational mind. All they have is
§384 faith 463