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114 his affections as if he did it of himself.

2. So far as man shuns evils according to the truths of faith received from the Word, the Lord enters with His redeeming and saving Spirit, removes evils and conjoins man with heaven and with Himself.

If man believed, as is the truth, that all good and truth are from the Lord, and all evil and falsity from hell, he would not appropriate good to himself and claim merit, nor appropriate evil to himself and make himself guilty of it. He would only reflect upon the evils within him, and cast them back from himself to infernal spirits from whence they come, and this by shunning them as sins.

3. The internal cannot be cleansed from the lusts of evil so long as evils in the external man are not removed.

4. The evils in the external man cannot be removed except by means of the man; that is with his consent and effort as of himself.

5. Therefore evils are permitted that they may be seen, and that man may repent of and resist them.

6. So far as man shuns evils in the external thought and life, the Lord removes the