Why are not the bodies of the wicked, it may be asked, as much denied and deformed with natural impurity and disease as their minds with moral and spiritual impurity? The answer is in the teaching above quoted concerning the general influx from heaven into the corresponding externals of the body providing that the corporeals of man shall not be controlled by the particular spirits attendant on him. In the evil the vital fluids of the body are always more or less defiled, diseased and infested. Whatever health or beauty appertains to them is secured by a general heavenly influx, from the corresponding parts of heaven, directly into the exteriors of the body.
Evil spirits flow in also by all poisons, noxious and hurtful things introduced from nature, for these correspond to evil, and are produced by correspondence from the hells. And when disease is induced evil spirits then flow into the unclean things belonging to the disease, which correspond to their own evil loves. Their sphere induces anxiety of mind, fear, lusts, cravings and passions, by which again, if not cast off, they defile the vital fluid.
