do with that childish pamphlet?" I
asked them, whether they had ever thought at all about hell. They
replied, "Who ever came up thence to give us information?" I asked,
whether they had ever thought at all in the world about a life after
death. They said, "Just as much as about the future life of beasts, and
at times as about phantoms, which exhale from dead bodies and float
about." I further asked them, whether they had heard any thing from the
priests on any of these subjects. They replied, that they had attended
only to the sound of their voices, and not to the matter; and what is
it? Being astonished at these answers, I said to them, "Turn your faces,
and direct your eyes to the midst of the forest, where the cavern is in
which you have been;" and they turned themselves, and saw that great
serpent around the cavern in spiral foldings, breathing poison, and also
the doleful birds in the branches over the serpents. I then asked them,
"What do you see?" But being much terrified, they did not answer; and I
said, "Do you see the dreadful sight? Know then that this is a
representative of adultery in the baseness of its lust." Suddenly at
that instant an angel presented himself, who was a priest, and opened
the hell in the western quarter into which such spirits are at length
collected; and he said, "Look thither:" and they saw that firy lake, and
knew there some of their friends in the world, who invited them to
themselves. Having seen and heard these things, they turned themselves
away, and rushed out of my sight, and retired from the forest; but I
observed their steps, that they only pretended to retire, and that by
winding ways they returned into the forest.

522. After this I returned home, and the next day, from a recollection
of these sad scenes, I looked to the same forest, and saw that it had
disappeared, and in its place there was a sandy plain, and in the midst
thereof a lake, in which were some red serpents. But some weeks after
when I was looking thither again, I saw on its right side some fallow
land, and upon it some husbandmen; and again, after some weeks I saw
springing out of that fallow land some tilled land surrounded with
shrubs; and I then heard a voice from heaven, "Enter into your chamber,
and shut the door, and apply to the work begun on the Apocalypse, and
finish it within two years."

* * * * *

ON THE IMPUTATION OF EACH LOVE, ADULTEROUS AND CONJUGIAL.

523. THE