themselves they tend with all their power. The man who explores himself in order to do the work of repentance, must explore his thoughts and the intentions of his will, and must there examine what he would do if it were permitted him, that is, if he were not afraid of the laws, and of the loss of reputation, honor and gain. There the evils of man reside, and the evils which he does in the body are all from thence."[1]
Moreover he teaches that "no one can shun evils as sins, so as inwardly to hold them in aversion, except by combats against them."
We come most completely under the sphere of evil spirits when we deny their exsitence, for they can then flow into and excite our disorderly mental forms in such way as to make evil seem good. The enjoyments of hereditary evils allure the thoughts and banish reflection, wherefore, if man did not know from some other source that they are evils he would call them goods, and from freedom according to the reason of his thought he would commit them; when he does this he appropriates them to himself. To deny the reality of evils in the thought
- ↑ Heavenly Doctrine Nos. 159-164.
