will and does not do it, shall be beaten
with many strokes (Lu 12:47).

And again,

If you were blind, you would not have sin, but you say, We see; therefore
your sin remains (In 9:41).

But it is one thing to acknowledge apparent truths and another to
acknowledge genuine truths. Those who acknowledge genuine truths and yet
do not live by them appear in the spiritual world to be without the light
and warmth of life in voice and speech, as though they were so much
inertness.

[3] A third kind of profanation is committed by those who apply the sense
of the letter of the Word to confirm evil loves and false principles.
This is because the confirmation of falsity is the denial of truth, and
the confirmation of evil is a rejection of good. In its bosom the Word is
nothing but divine truth and good. But this does not appear in the lowest
sense or sense of the letter in genuine truths, except where the Lord and
the very way of salvation are taught, but in clothed truths, called
appearances of truth.

That sense can therefore be seized upon to confirm heresies of many
kinds. But one who confirms evil loves does violence to divine goods, and
one who confirms false principles does violence to divine truths. The
latter violence is called falsification of truth and the former
adulteration of good; both are meant by "bloods"* in the Word. For a
spiritual holiness, which is also the spirit of truth proceeding from the
Lord, is in every particular of the sense of the letter of the Word. This
holiness is injured when the Word is falsified and adulterated. It is
plain that this is profanation.

* Plural in the Hebrew, especially of blood that has been shed. "Both" is
emphatic here, and for the significance of the plural see Arcana
Caelestia, n. 374e and Apocalypse Explained, n. 329(27).

[4] A fourth kind of profanation is committed by those who utter pious
and holy things and also counterfeit affections of a love for them in
tone and manner, and yet at heart do not believe and love them. Most of
these are hypocrites and Pharisees who are deprived after death of all
truth and good and thereupon are sent into outer darkness. Those who have
confirmed themselves by this kind of profanation against the Divine and
against the Word and thus against the spiritual things of the Word, sit
in outer darkness dumb, unable to speak, wanting to babble pious and holy
things as they did in the world, but unable to do so. For in the
spiritual