from them, from enjoyment in them, remain natural and become
sensuous-corporeal, and in their own thinking, which is that of their
spirit, are insane. And yet, as long as they are in the world they can
speak and act rationally and wisely, for they are human beings and so
have rationality and liberty, though they still do this from self-love
and love of the world. After death and on becoming spirits, they can
enjoy nothing that they did not enjoy in the world. Their enjoyment is
that of an infernal love and is turned into the unpleasant, sorrowful
and dreadful, meant in the Word by torment and hell-fire. Plain it is,
then, that man's first state is one of damnation and that they are in it
who do not suffer themselves to be regenerated.

[4] Man's second state--of reformation--is his state when he begins to
think of heaven for the joy there, thus of God from whom he has heaven's
joy. But at first the thought comes from the enjoyment of self-love; to
him heaven's joy is that enjoyment. While the enjoyments of that love and
of the evils flowing from it rule, moreover, he cannot but think that to
gain heaven is to pour out prayers, hear sermons, observe the Supper,
give to the poor, help the needy, make offerings to churches, contribute
to hospitals, and the like. In this state a man is persuaded that merely
to think about what religion teaches, whether this is called faith or
called faith and charity, is to be saved. He is so minded because he
gives no thought to the evils in the enjoyments of which he is. While
those enjoyments remain, the evils do. The enjoyments of the evils are
from the lust for them which continually inspires them and, when no fear
restrains, brings them to pass.

[5] While evils remain in the lusts of love for them and so in one's
enjoyments, there is no faith, piety, charity or worship except in
externals, which seem real in the world's sight, but are not. They may be