exposed; the wicked, however, fall under them, while the good generally conquer.
Concerning spiritual temptations, the Doctrine of the New Church thus speaks:—"Scarcely any one in the Christian world at this day knows whence temptations are. He who undergoes them, believes no otherwise than that they are torments arising from the evils which are inwardly in man, and which first render him unquiet, next anxious, and finally torment him. He is altogether ignorant that they are produced by the evil spirits that are with him: that he is ignorant of this, is because he does not believe that he is in consociation with spirits while he lives in the world, and hardly supposes that there is any spirit with him at all; when yet man, as to the interiors, is continually in the society of spirits and angels. Temptations take place when man is in the process of regeneration, for no one can be regenerated without undergoing temptations. And they exist, as before said, from evil spirits who are about him; for man is let at such times into the state of evil which constitutes his proprium (or selfhood); and when he comes into this state, evil or infernal spirits encompass him; and when they perceive that he is interiorly protected by angels, the evil spirits excite the falses which he had thought, and the evils which he had done, while the angels from the interior defend him. It is this combat which is perceived by man as temptation, but so obscurely that he scarcely knows otherwise than that it is a kind of anxiety. Nevertheless, man and his eternal salvation are then at stake; and the determination of the stake
