the Lord. It may then be seen that
the Lord keeps evil and good apart, so that one is interior and the other
exterior, and thus provides against their being mingled.

[3] 3. _This cannot be done, however, if man first acknowledges and lives
according to truths of faith and then later recedes and denies them._
This is plain from what has just been said, that all which a man thinks,
speaks and does from the will is appropriated to him and remains; and
that the Lord in His divine providence constantly foresees and disposes
that good shall be by itself and evil by itself, and so can be separated.
They are also separated by the Lord after death. Those who are inwardly
evil and outwardly good are deprived of the good and left to their evil.
The reverse occurs with the inwardly good who outwardly like other men
have acquired wealth, sought distinction, delighted in the mundane, and
indulged some lusts. Good and evil have not been commingled by them,
however, but are separate, like internal and external; they have
resembled the evil in many ways outwardly but not inwardly. Evil is
separate from good in the evil, too, who have appeared outwardly like the
good for piety, worship, speech and deeds, although wicked inwardly. With
those, however, who have first acknowledged and lived by truths of faith
and then lived contrary to them and rejected them and particularly if
they have denied them, good and evil are no longer separate, but mixed.
Such a person has appropriated both good and evil to himself, and thus
combined and mixed them.

[4] 4. _He then mixes good and evil to a point where they cannot be
separated._ This follows from what has just been said. And if evil cannot
be separated from good and good from evil, a person can be neither in
heaven nor in hell. Everyone must be in one or the other; he cannot be in
both; for so he would be now in heaven and now in hell; and in heaven he
would act in hell's favor and in hell act in heaven's favor. He would
thus destroy the life of all around him, heavenly life among the angels
and infernal life among the devils; as a result everyone's life would
perish. For everyone must live his own life; no one lives a life foreign
to his own, still less one opposed to it. Hence, in every man after
death, when he becomes a spirit or a spiritual being, the Lord separates
good from evil and evil from good, good from evil in those who are
inwardly in evil, and evil from good in those inwardly in goo