evil; and thus they have regard to the
neighbor's good. (A.E., n. 1016.)

When a man abstains from hatred and turns away from it and shuns it as
devilish, love, charity, mercy, clemency flow in through heaven from the
Lord, and then for the first time the works that he does are works of
love and charity; while the works he had done before, however good might
be their appearance in the external form, were all works of love of self
and of the world, in which hatred lurked whenever they were not
rewarded. So long as hatred is not put away so long man is merely
natural; and the merely natural man remains in all his inherited evil,
nor can he become spiritual until hatred, with its root, which is love
of ruling over all, is put away; for the fire of heaven, which is
spiritual love, cannot flow in so long as the fire of hell, which is
hatred, stands in the way and shuts it out. (A.E., n. 1017.)

VIII. The Eighth Commandment

The eighth commandment of the Decalogue, "Thou shalt not bear false
witness," shall now be explained. "To bear false witness" signifies in
the sense nearest to the letter to lie about the neighbor by accusing
him falsely. But in the internal sense it signifies to call what is just
unjust, and what is unjust just, and to confirm this by means of
falsities; while in the inmost sense it signifies to falsity the truth
and good of the Word, and on the other hand to prove a falsity of
doctrine to be true by confirming it by means of fallacies, appearances,
fabrications, knowledges falsely applied, sophistries, and the like.
The confirmations themselves and the consequent persuasions are false
witnesses, for they are false attestations.

From this it can be seen that what is here meant is not only false
witness before a judge, but even a judge himself who in perverting right
makes what is just unjust, and what is unjust just, for he as well as
the witness himself acts the part of a false witness. The same is true
of every man who makes what is straight to appear crooked, and what is
crooked to appear straight; likewise any ecclesiastical leader who
falsifies the truth of the Word and perverts its good. In a word, every
falsification of truth, spiritual, moral, and civil, which is done from
an evil heart, is false witness. (A.E., n. 1019.)

When a man abstains from false testimonies understood in a moral and
spiritual sense, and shuns and turns away from them as sins, a love of
truth and a love of ju