EU 169 - What It Is to Love the Lord and the Neighbor; EU 174 - Self-Love

EU 169

. . . to love the Lord
is to love the commandments which are from Him,
which is to live according to them from love.
That love toward the neighbor
is to will good and consequently do good
to a fellow-citizen, to one's country,
to the church, and to the Lord's kingdom,
not for the sake of self, to be seen, or to merit,
but from the affection of good.
Concerning regeneration,
we observed
that those who are regenerated by the Lord,
and commit truths immediately to life,
come into an interior perception concerning them;
but that those who receive truths first in the memory,
and afterwards will them and do them,
are those who are in faith;
for they act from faith,
which is then called conscience.

EU 174

. . . the dominion of self-love,
which is opposite to
the dominion of love towards the neighbor,
began when man alienated himself from the Lord;
for in proportion as a person
does not love and worship the Lord,
in the same proportion
he loves and worships himself,
and so far also he loves the world.
. . . For in proportion as self-love increased,
in the same proportion all kinds of evil,
as enmity, envy, hatred, revenge, cruelty and deceit,
increased with it,
being exercised against all who opposed them.
For from the proprium
in which those are who are in self-love,
nothing but evil springs,
inasmuch as a person's proprium is nothing but evil,
and because the proprium is evil,
it does not receive good from heaven.
Consequently self-love, while it has dominion,
is the father of all such evils.
And that love is also of such a nature
that as far as the reins are relaxed it rushes on,
until at length every one possessed by it
wishes to domineer over all others in the whole world,
and to possess all the goods of others.
Yea, even this is not enough,
but he wishes to have dominion over
the whole heaven,
as may be evident from the Babylon of this day.
This then is the rule of self-love,
from which the rule of the love of the neighbor differs
as much as heaven does from hell.