Page:The Gist of Swedenborg.djvu/103

HELL

VIL with man is hell with him; for it is the same thing whether we say evil or hell. And as a man is the cause of his own evil, therefore he, and not the Lord, also leads himself into hell. So far is the Lord from leading man into hell, that He delivers him from it as far as a man does not will and love to be in his own evil.

All a man's will and love remains with him after death. He who wills and loves evil in the world, wills and loves the same evil in the other life; and then he no longer suffers himself to be withdrawn from it. This is the reason that a man who is in evil is bound fast to hell and is actually there, too, in spirit, and after death he desires nothing more than to be where his evil is. After death, therefore, a man casts himself into hell, and not the Lord. —Heaven and Hell, n. 547

LL evil bears its punishment with it. Evil spirits are punished because the fear of punishment is the one means of subduing evils in this state. Exhortation no longer avails, nor instruction, nor fear of the law nor fear for one's reputation; for now the