Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/180

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after more. That persons of this character, when after death they enter the other life, are altogether opposed to the Divine and heaven, and are in favor of hell, may be seen in the little treatise concerning the Last Judgment and the destruction of Babylon.

Picture to yourself a society of such persons, all of whom love themselves alone, and love others only so far as they make one with themselves; and you will see that their love for each other is not unlike that of robbers, who, so far as their associates act conjointly with them, embrace and call them friends; but so far as they do not act conjointly with them, and reject their domination, rush upon and cruelly slay them. If their interiors or minds be examined, it will be found that they are full of bitter enmity toward each other, and that in heart they laugh at all justice and sincerity, and likewise at the Divine whom they reject as of no account.

The interiors belonging to the thoughts and affections of those who love themselves above all things, are turned toward themselves and the world, and thus are turned away from the Lord and heaven. Hence they are filled with evils of every kind, and the Divine cannot flow in; for the instant it does, it is immersed in their thoughts about themselves, and is defiled, and is likewise infused into the evils which arise from their proprium.

The evils which appertain to those who are in the