Heaven and Hell - Swedenborg Foundation

HEAVEN AND HELL 360
whenever he so wishes has been made clear to me by much
experience. Evil spirits that have become irrational in the world
by rejecting the Divine and the truths of the church, and
confirming themselves against them, have frequently been
turned by Divine power toward those who were in the light of
truth, and they then comprehended all things as the angels did,
and acknowledged them to be true, and also that they
comprehended them all. But the moment these spirits relapsed
into themselves, and turned back to the love of their will, they
had no comprehension of truths and affirmed the opposite.
[2] I have also heard certain dwellers in hell saying that they
knew and perceived that which they did to be evil and that
which they thought to be false; but that they were unable to
resist the delight of their love, that is, their will, and that it is
their will that drives their thought to see evil as good and falsity
as truth. Evidently, then, those that are in falsity from evil have
the ability to understand and be rational, but have no wish to;
and they have no wish to for the reason that they have loved
falsities more than truths, because these agree with the evils in
which they are. To love and to will is the same thing, for what
a man wills he loves, and what he loves he wills.
[3] Because the state of men is such that they are able to
understand truths if they wish to, I have been permitted to
confirm spiritual truths, which are truths of heaven and the
church, even by reasonings, and this in order that the falsities
by which the rational mind in many has been closed up may be
dispersed by reasonings, and thus the eye may perhaps in some
degree be opened; for to confirm spiritual goods by reasonings
is permitted to all that are in truths. Who could ever
understand the Word from the sense of its letter, unless he saw