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So far as any one removes evil, so far a capacity is given for good to succeed in its place, 147. So far as evil is hated, so far good is loved, 147. Evils and falses, after they arose, were distinguished into genera, species, and differences, 479. All evils are together of the external and internal man; the internal intends them, and the external does them, 486.
The abomination of desolation signifies the falsification and deprivation of all truth; affliction signifies the state of the church infested by evils and falses; and the consummation of the age, concerning which those things are spoken, signifies the last time or end of the church.
It was next said to him from behind, "Do you know that those who are in hell are insane from falses?" and when I asked him concerning these words what he heard, he said, "I heard, 'Do you know that those who are in heaven are wise from truths?" and when the latter words were spoken to him from behind, he said that he heard, "Do you know that those who are in hell, are insane from falses?" and so in other instances: from which it evidently appears, that when the mind turns itself from the Lord, it turns to itself, and then it perceives things contrary.
It is one thing to see new truths when they are revealed, but it is another step to be willing to see that those truths condemn falses in which we have strongly confirmed ourselves, or evil habits in which we delight, and to avoid confirming ourselves in falses, and to avoid striving to justify evils.
It must be self-evident to every intelligent Christian that if it is wrong to deliberately appropriate falses and evils "temperately" or moderately to the building up of our spiritual organizations, it is equally wrong to appropriate temperately those natural substances which correspond to falses and evils in a vain attempt to build up healthy natural bodies.
The evil principle in Swedenborg's picture is, not the colossal and massive horror of the Inferno, nor that stern wrestler with fate who darkens the canvas of Paradise Lost, but an aggregation of poor, confused spirits, seeking rest and finding none save in the unsavory atmosphere of the "falses."
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