n this
world or in the world to come (Mt 12:31, 32).

[4] Liberty itself and rationality itself cannot be given to those who
ascribe all things to nature and nothing to the Divine, and have made
this a conviction by reasonings from visible things; for these are
atheists.

[5] True liberty and rationality can hardly be given to those who have
confirmed themselves much in falsities of religion; for a confirmer of
falsity is a denier of truth. But they can be given to those, in whatever
religion, who have not so confirmed themselves. On this see what is
adduced in _Doctrine for the New Jerusalem about Sacred Scripture,_
nn. 91-97.

[6] Infants and children cannot attain to essential liberty and
rationality before they grow up. For the interiors of the mind of man are
opened gradually, and meanwhile are like seeds in unripe fruit, without
ground in which to sprout.

99. We have said that true liberty and rationality cannot be given to
those who have denied the Divine of the Lord and the holiness of the
Word; to those who have confirmed themselves in favor of nature and
against the Divine; and hardly to those who have strongly confirmed
themselves in falsities of religion; still none of these have destroyed
the faculties themselves. I have heard atheists, who had become devils
and satans, understand arcana of wisdom quite as well as angels, but only
while they heard them from others; on returning into their own thought,
they did not understand them, for the reason that they did not will to do
so. They were shown that they could also will this, did not the love and
enjoyment of evil turn them away. This they understood, too, when they
heard it. Indeed they asserted that they could but did not will to be
able to do so, for then they could not will what they did will, namely,
evil from enjoyment in the lust of it. I have often heard such
astonishing things in the spiritual world. I am fully persuaded therefore
that every man has liberty and rationality, and that every man can attain
true liberty and rationality if he shuns evils as sins. But the adult who
has not come into true liberty and rationality in the world can never do
so after death, for the state of his life remains to eternity what it was
in the world.

VI. IT IS A LAW OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE THAT MAN SHALL REMOVE EVILS AS SINS
IN THE EXTERNAL MAN OF HIMSELF, AND ONLY SO CAN THE LORD REMOVE THE EVILS
IN THE INTERNAL MAN AND AT THE SAME TIME IN THE EXTERNAL

100.