9009. And he that hath not lain in wait. That this signifies when it was not of foresight from the will, is evident from the signification of “lying in wait,” as being to act with deliberation, thus with foresight, for the evil which one who lies in wait is about to do he foresees in his mind; and because he does such evil with foresight, he therefore does it also from the will, for it proceeds therefrom. There are evils which proceed from the will of man, but are not of foresight; and there are evils which proceed from the will, and are of foresight. Those which proceed from the will, and from foresight, are much worse than those which are not from foresight; because the man sees that they are evils, and can therefore desist from them, but is not willing, and he thereby confirms them in himself, and evils confirmed put on nature, so that afterward they can scarcely be extirpated; for in such case he summons spirits from hell who afterward do not easily retire.

[2] Evils which proceed from one part of the mind and not at the same time from the other, such as those which come from the intellectual part, and not at the same time from the will part, are not rooted in and appropriated to the man. That alone is rooted in and appropriated to him which passes from the intellectual part into the will part; or what is the same, which passes from the thought which is of the understanding into the affection which is of the will, and thence into act. Those things which enter into the will are those which are said to enter into the heart.

[3] But evils which proceed solely from the will, thus not with premeditation, are such as the man inclines to hereditarily, or from some previous consequent actual doing of evil. These are not imputed to the man unless he has confirmed them in his intellectual part (see n. 966, 2308, 8806); but when they have been confirmed in this part, they have then been inscribed on the man, and become his own, and are imputed to him. But these evils cannot be confirmed with a man in his intellectual part except in his adult age, namely, when he begins to think, and understand things, for himself; for before this he had no faith from himself, but only from his teachers and parents. From all this it is evident what is signified by, “if he has not lain in wait,” namely, when it was not of foresight from the will.

2308. No one ever suffers punishment in the other life on account of hereditary evil, because it is not his, and therefore he is not to blame for being of such a nature; but everyone suffers on account of the actual evil which is his own, and consequently for so much of the hereditary evil as he has appropriated to himself by actual life (a s before said, n. 966). It is not therefore for the sake of punishment that the little children on becoming adult are remitted into the state of their hereditary evil; but that they may know that of themselves they are nothing but evil, and that it is of the Lord’s mercy that they are taken away from the hell that is with them into heaven; and that they are not in heaven by their own merit, but of the Lord; and thereby to prevent them from boasting before others of the good that is in them; for this is contrary to the good of mutual love, as it is contrary to the truth of faith.