Verse 1. Then the state of the soul is again changed, and it progresses to a state in which it may be endowed with natural good in externals (see Apocalypse Explained 405); and the love of the world, which reigns in the natural mind, comes out to oppose the soul with all the allurements and pleasures of the senses, and all its confirmatory arguments to combat the soul in the state to which it has now arrived.