ne who believes that everything he thinks and does is
from himself is not unlike a beast. For he thinks only from the natural
mind which man has in common with beasts, and not from the spiritual,
rational mind which is the truly human mind; for this mind acknowledges
that God alone thinks from Himself and that man does so from God.
Therefore one who thinks only from the natural mind knows no difference
between man and animal except that man speaks and a beast makes sounds,
and he believes they die alike.

[3] Something further is to be said about those who await influx. They
receive none, except for a few who desire it with the whole heart. These
at times receive some response through a living perception in thought or
by tacit utterance but rarely by an explicit one, and this then is that
they should think and act as they determine and are able, and that one
who acts wisely is wise and one who acts foolishly is foolish. They are
never instructed what to believe or do, in order that human rationality
and liberty may not perish, that is, in order that everyone shall act in
freedom according to reason in all appearance as of himself. Those who
are told by influx what they are to believe or do are not being
instructed by the Lord, nor by any angel of heaven, but by some spirit,
an Enthusiast, Quaker or Moravian, and are being misled. All influx from
the Lord is effected by enlightenment of the understanding and by an
affection of truth, and passes by the latter into the former.

[4] Second: _To believe and think, as is the truth, that all good and
truth are from the Lord and all evil and falsity from hell, seems
impossible, yet is truly human and hence angelic._ To believe and think
that all good and truth are from God seems possible, if no more is said,
for it falls in with a theological belief contrary to which it is not
allowable to think. But to believe and think also that all evil and
falsity are from hell seems impossible, for in that belief man would not
think at all. But man still thinks as from himself though it is from
hell, for the Lord grants to everyone that his thought, wherever it is
from, shall appear to be his own in him. Else man would not live as a
human being, nor could he be led out of hell and brought into heaven,
that is, be reformed, as we have shown many times.

[5] Therefore the Lord also grants man to know and consequently to think
that when he is in evil he is in hell, and that if he thinks evil