ity, for
what a man loves he continually lusts after. Infernal fire is also
delight, since what a man loves and lusts after he perceives, when he
obtains it, to be delightful. Man's delight of heart is from no other
source. Infernal fire, therefore, is the lust and delight that spring
from these two loves as their origins. The evils flowing from these
loves are contempt of others, enmity, and hostility against those who
do not favor them, envy, hatred, and revenge, and from these
fierceness and cruelty; and in respect to the Divine they are denial
and consequent contempt, derision, and detraction of the holy things
of the church; and after death, when man becomes a spirit, these
evils are changed to anger and hatred against these holy things (see
above, n. 562). And as these evils breathe forth continually the
destruction and murder of those whom they account as enemies, and
against whom they burn with hatred and revenge, so it is the delight
of their life to will to destroy and kill, and so far as they are
unable to do this, to will to do mischief, to injure, and to exercise
cruelty. [2] Such is the meaning of "fire" in the Word, where the
evil and the hells are treated of, some passages from which I will
here quote in the way of proof:

Everyone is a hypocrite and an evil doer, and every mouth
speaketh folly. For wickedness burneth as the fire; it
devoureth the briers and thorns, and kindleth in the
thickets of the forests, and they roll upward in the
rising of smoke; and the people is become like food for
fire; no man spareth his brother (Isa. 9:17-19).

I will show wonders in the heavens, and in the earth blood
and fire, and pillars of smoke; the sun shall be turned
into darkness (Joel 2:30, 31).

The land shall become burning pitch; it shall not be
quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up
forever (Isa. 34:9, 10).

Behold the day cometh burning as a furnace, and all the
proud and every worker of wickedness shall be stubble; and
the day that cometh shall set them on fire (Mal. 4:1).

Babylon is become a habitation of demons. They cried out
as they saw the smoke of her burning. Her smoke goeth up
unto the ages of the ages (Apoc. 18:2, 18; 19:3).

He opened the pit of the abyss, and there went up a smoke
out of the pit as the smoke of a great furnace; and the
sun was darkened, and the air, by t