do
evil and does so in a thousand ways. Yet he can do evil to the evil only
by reason of their evil; he cannot harm the good at all; if, as sometimes
happens, he does, it is by conjunction with their evil.

[2] In this way temptations arise; they are infestations by evil spirits
who are with a man; so combats ensue by which the good are freed from
their evils. Since the wicked have no power, all hell in the Lord's sight
is not only nothing, but nothing at all in point of power, as I have seen
proved by much experience. But it is remarkable that the evil all deem
themselves powerful, and the good all think themselves powerless. This is
because the evil ascribe everything to their own power or shrewdness and
malice, and nothing to the Lord; whereas the good ascribe nothing to
their own prudence, but all to the Lord who is almighty. Evil and falsity
together are not anything for the further reason that they have no
spiritual life. The life of the infernals is therefore called death, not
life. Since life holds everything, death has nothing.

20. Men in evil and at the same time in truths may be likened to eagles
flying aloft which, deprived of their wings, fall. For after death, on
becoming spirits, men do the like who have understood and spoken and
taught truths and yet have not looked to God in their lives. By means of
things of the understanding they raise themselves aloft and even enter
heaven at times and feign themselves angels of light. But when they are
deprived of truths and are cast out, they fall down to hell. Eagles also
signify rapacious men with intellectual acumen, and wings signify
spiritual truths. Such, we said, are those who have not looked to God in
their lives. To look to God in life means simply to think that a given
evil is a sin against God, and for that reason not to commit it.

21. (ix) _The Lord's divine providence causes evil and its falsity to
serve for equilibrium, contrast, and purification, and so for the
conjunction of good and truth in others._ It is obvious from the
preceding that the Lord's divine providence continually operates in order
that truth may be united in man with good and good with truth, because
that union is the church and heaven. For that union is in the Lord and in
all that proceeds from Him. From that union, heaven and the church are
called a marriage, and the kingdom of God is likened in the Word to a
marriage. Again, the Sabbath signified that union and was the holiest