riorly into truths of
wisdom and at the same time into goods of love except as man can be kept
in them to the very close of life.

222. (i) _Man may be admitted into wisdom about spiritual things and also
into love of them and still not be reformed._ This is because he
possesses rationality and liberty; by rationality he can be raised into
an almost angelic wisdom, and by liberty into love not unlike angelic
love. But such as the love is, such is the wisdom; if the love is
celestial and spiritual, the wisdom becomes so, but if the love is
diabolical and infernal, the wisdom is likewise. Outwardly, and so to
others, it may seem to be celestial and spiritual, but in inward form,
namely in its essence, it is diabolical and infernal; not as manifested,
but as it is within one. That it is of this nature men do not see, for
they are natural, see and hear naturally, and the outward form is
natural; but angels do see it, for they are spiritual, see and hear
spiritually, and the inward form is spiritual.

[2] From this it is plain that man can be admitted into wisdom about
spiritual things and also into love of them and still not be reformed; he
is admitted only into a natural love of them, not into a spiritual. This
is for the reason that man can admit himself into a natural love, but the
Lord alone can admit him into a spiritual love, and those admitted into
this are reformed, but those admitted only into the natural love are not.
For the most part the latter are hypocrites, and many are of the Order of
Jesuits who inwardly do not believe in the divine at all, but play
outwardly with divine things like actors.

223. It has been granted me by much experience in the spiritual world to
know that man possesses in himself the faculty of apprehending arcana of
wisdom like the angels themselves. For I have seen fiery devils who not
only understood arcana of wisdom when they heard them, but who spoke
them, too, out of their rationality. But the moment they returned to
their diabolical love they did not understand them, but in place of them
the contrary, which was insanity, and this they called wisdom. In fact, I
was allowed to hear them laugh at their insanity when they were in a
state of wisdom, and at wisdom when they were in an insane state. One who
has been of this character in the world, on becoming a spirit after death
is usually brought into states of wisdom and insanity by turns, for him
to distinguish the one from the other