ation

In the third kind of profanation are those who with devout gestures and
pious utterance worship Divine things, and yet in heart and spirit deny
them; thus who venerate the holy things of the Word and of the church
and of worship outwardly or before the world, and yet at home or in
secret deride them. When those of this class are in a holy external,
and are teaching in a church or conversing with the common people, they
do not know otherwise than that what they are saying is so; but as soon
as they return into themselves their thought is reversed. Because these
are such they can counterfeit angels of light, although they are angels
of darkness.

From this it is clear that this kind of profanation is a hypocritical
kind. They are not unlike images made of filth and gilded, or like
fruits rotten within but with a beautiful skin, or like nuts eaten by
worms within but with a whole shell. From all this it is evident that
their internal is diabolical, and therefore that their holy external is
profane.

Such are some of the rulers in the Babylon of the present day, and many
of a certain society in Babylon, as those of them know who claim to
themselves dominion over the souls of men and over heaven. For to
believe as they do, that power has been given them to save and to admit
into heaven, is the very opposite of acknowledging in heart that there
is a God, and for the reason that man, in order to be saved and admitted
into heaven, must look to the Lord and pray to Him. But a man who
believes that such power has been given him looks to himself, and
believes the things that are the Lord's to be in himself; and to believe
this, and at the same time to believe that there is a God or that God is
in him, is impossible. For a man to believe that God is in him when he
thinks himself to be above the holy things of the church, and heaven to
be in his power, is like ascribing that belief to Lucifer, who burns
with the fire of ruling over all things. If such a man thinks that God
is in him he cannot think this otherwise than from himself; and thinking
from himself that God is in him is thinking not that God is in him, but
that he himself is God, as is said of Lucifer in Isaiah (xiv. 13, 14),
by whom is there meant Babylon, as is evident from the fourth and
twenty-second verses of the same chapter.

Moreover, such a man of himself, when power is given him, shows forth
what he is of himself, and this by degrees according to