Lord for help and for power to resist them--a power which is never
denied when it is asked. By these two means a man is cleansed of
evils. He cannot be cleansed of evils if he only looks to the Lord and
prays; for then, after he has prayed, he believes that he is quite
without sins, or that they have been forgiven, by which he understands
that they are taken away. But then he still remains in them; and to
remain in them is to increase them. Nor are evils removed only by
shunning them; for then the man looks to himself, and thereby
strengthens the origin of evil, which was that he turned himself back
from the Lord and turned to himself.

--_The Doctrine Concerning Charity, n._ 146


THE GREAT ARENA

In temptations the hells fight against man, and the Lord for him. To
every falsity which the hells inject, there is an answer from the
Divine. The falsities inflow into the outward man, the answer into the
inward man, coming to perception scarcely otherwise than as hope, and
the resulting consolation, in which, however, there is a multitude of
things of which the man is unaware.

--_Arcana Coelestia, n._ 8159

In temptations a man is left, to all appearance, to himself alone; yet
he has not been left alone, for God is then most present in his inmost
being, and upholds him. When anyone overcomes in temptation,
therefore, he enters into closer union with God.