is, into angelic wisdom, while the will cannot be raised into the heat
of heaven, that is, into angelic love, unless man flees from evils as
sins and looks to the Lord, has been made plainly evident to me from
experience in the spiritual world. I have frequently seen and perceived
that simple spirits, who knew merely that God is and that the Lord was
born a man, and who knew scarcely anything else, clearly apprehended the
arcana of angelic wisdom almost as the angels do; and not these simple
ones alone, but many also of the infernal crew. These, while they
listened, understood, but not when they thought within themselves;
for while they listened, light entered from above, and when they thought
within themselves, no light could enter except that which corresponded
to their heat or love; consequently when they had listened to and
perceived these arcana, as soon as they turned their ears away they
remembered nothing, those belonging to the infernal crew even rejecting
these things with disgust and utterly denying them, because the fire of
their love and its light, being delusive, induced darkness, by which the
heavenly light entering from above was extinguished.

244. The same thing happens in the world. A man not altogether stupid,
and who has not confirmed himself in falsities from the pride of
self-intelligence, hearing others speak on some exalted matter, or
reading something of the kind, if he is in any affection of knowing,
understands these things and also retains them, and may afterwards
confirm them. A bad man as well as a good man may do this. Even a bad
man, though in heart he denies the Divine things pertaining to the
church, can still understand them, and also speak of and preach them,
and in writing learnedly prove them; but when left to his own thought,
from his own infernal love he thinks against them and denies them. From
which it is obvious that the understanding can be in spiritual light even
when the will is not in spiritual heat; and from this it also follows