Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/123

 is it afterward amended, since it is that plane into which interior things which are spiritual flow, it being their receptacle; therefore when this is perverted, interior things when they flow in, are perverted in like manner. The case herein is as when the eye is injured, or any other organ of sense or member of the body; on which occasion interior things feel and act by them no otherwise than according to reception therein. Therefore it is that man can never be purified to eternity if he be not purified as to his natural principle in the world; this is meant by the Lord's words, 'What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter. (Arcana Cœlestia 10,243.)

Then there are degrees belonging to the mind; and the influx of life is through the higher degrees to the lower and the quality of the life that inflows, or the character of the individual, is according to the form of the natural degree which receives the influx. If this degree is in a disordered or hellish form, it changes God's love and wisdom as they flow in, into their opposites; comparatively as the fox-glove or deadly nightshade changes the sunshine and the rain and the sweet dews of heaven into poison. But if this degree be regenerated or restored to order, then the whole man is regenerated. Life being received into an orderly natural form, is felt and manifested as the true life.

The character, therefore, of the lower or natural degree of a man's mind, since it determines for ever the quality