Verse 9. And then from a principle of good, he must worship the Lord in order that evil may be removed and rejected.

320. 4. If we believed that--as is truly the case--everything good and true comes from the Lord and everything evil and false comes from hell, then we would not claim the goodness as our own and make it self-serving or claim the evil as our own and make ourselves guilty of it. However, this contradicts the belief of people who have convinced themselves of the appearance that wisdom and prudence come from themselves and do not flow in according to the way their minds are structured (see 319 above). For this reason, it needs to be explained; and to do that clearly, I shall use the following sequence. (a) If we convince ourselves of the appearance that wisdom and prudence come from ourselves and are therefore within us as our own possessions, it necessarily seems to us that if this were not the case we would not be human at all, only animals or statues; and yet the truth is just the opposite. (b) It seems as though it would be impossible to believe and think in accord with the truth that everything good and true comes from the Lord and everything evil and false from hell, when in fact to do so is truly human and angelic. (c) Believing and thinking like this is impossible for people who do not acknowledge the Lord's divine nature and who do not acknowledge that evils are sins; but it is possible for people who acknowledge these two facts. (d) If we make these two acknowledgments, we simply reflect on the evils within ourselves and, to the extent that we abstain and turn from them as sins, throw them back into the hell they came from. (e) This means that divine providence does not charge anyone with evil or credit anyone with good. Rather, our own prudence makes each of these claims.