t, and one who fails to give it thought,
goes on in it, blind to it. Thought sees good and evil as the eye sees
beauty and ugliness. One who thinks and wills evil is in evil, and so is
a person who thinks that it does not come to God's sight, or if it does
is forgiven by Him; he supposes then that he is without evil. If such
persons refrain from doing evil, they do so not because it is a sin
against God, but for fear of the law and for their reputation's sake. In
spirit they still do evil, for it is man's spirit that thinks and wills.
As a result, what a man thinks in his spirit in the world, he commits
when he becomes a spirit on his departure from the world.

[3] In the spiritual world, into which everyone comes after death, the
question is not asked what your belief has been or your doctrine, but
what your life has been. Was it such or such? For, as is known, such as
one's life is, such is one's belief, yes, one's doctrine. For life
fashions a doctrine and a belief for itself.

102. From all this it is plain that it is a law of divine providence that
evils be removed by man, for without the removal of them the Lord cannot
be conjoined to man and from Himself lead man to heaven. But it is not
known that man ought to remove evils in the external man as of himself
and that unless he does so the Lord cannot remove the evils in his
internal man. This is to be presented, therefore, to the reason in light
of its own in this order:

i. Every man has an external and an internal of thought.
ii. His external of thought is in itself such as his internal is.
iii. The internal cannot be purified from the lusts of evil as long as
the evils in the external man have not been removed, for these impede.
iv. Only with the man's participation can evils in the external man be
removed by the Lord.
v. Therefore a man ought to remove evils from the external man as of
himself.
vi. The Lord then purifies him from the lusts of evil in the internal man
and from the evils themselves in the external.
vii. The continuous effort of the Lord in His divine providence is to
unite man to Himself and Himself to man, in order to be able to bestow
the felicities of eternal life on him, which can be done only so far as
evils, along with their lusts, are removed.

103. (i) _Every man has an external and an internal of thought._ By
external and internal of thought the same is meant here as by external
and internal man, and by this nothing else is meant t