"Infernal fire," says Swedenborg, "is the love of self and the world therefore it is every lust which springs from these loves; for lust is love in its continuity, since a man continually lusts after what he loves; and it is likewise delight, for what a man loves or lusts after, he perceives as delightful when he obtains it; nor is heart-felt delight communicated to him from any other source.
"Infernal fire, therefore, is the lust and delight which spring from the love of self and the world as from their fountain. The evils originating in these two loves, are contempt of others, enmity and hostility against those who do not favor them, envy, hatred and revenge, and as a consequence of these, savageness and cruelty. And in regard to the Divine, they consist in the denial, and hence in the contempt, mocking, and reviling of the holy things belonging to the church; and after death, when man becomes a spirit, these evils are turned into anger and hatred against those holy things. . . . These are the things signified by fire in the Word, where the wicked and the hells are treated of."—Heaven and Hell, n. 570.
The supreme love of self, therefore, according to the New Theology, together with all the unholy passions and malignant feelings which proceed from it, and the infernal delight felt in the indulgence of filthy lusts, is what is meant by hell-fire in the true spiritual sense. This is what the Gehenna of fire corresponds to; for the delight arising from the gratification of mean, base, and purely
