59. The reason only edible and green plants are mentioned here as food for the natural man is this: While a person is being regenerated and becoming spiritual he is involved constantly in conflict, which is why the Lord's Church is called militant. For before regeneration started, evil desires were in control, since the whole person consisted entirely of evil desires and resulting falsities. During the process of regeneration his desires and falsities cannot be done away with instantly, since that would amount to destroying the whole person; indeed he has not acquired any other life for himself. So for a long time evil spirits are left with him to activate his desires, and so release them in countless ways. Indeed the spirits are left there to do this in order that those desires may be turned by the Lord towards something good, and in this way the person may be reformed. In the hour of conflict evil spirits are present who absolutely hate everything that is good and true, that is, every element of love and faith in the Lord - elements that alone are good and true because they contain eternal life. These evil spirits leave a person with no other food than that which is compared to edible and green plants. But the Lord gives him a food as well that is compared to the plant yielding seed and to the tree in which there is fruit. These are periods of peace and calm attended by their forms of delight and happiness. This cycle occurs repeatedly.

[2] If the Lord did not protect man moment by moment, and in every shortest instant, he would immediately perish, for there is such murderous hatred reigning in the world of spirits against all forms of love and faith in the Lord as to defy description. I can positively declare that this is so, because for several years now, although still in the [physical] body, I have also been in the next life in the company of spirits. I have been surrounded by evil spirits, even the worst of them, sometimes by thousands, who have been allowed to pour out their venom and molest me in every possible way, but who nevertheless could do no harm to the tiniest hair on my head, so well did the Lord protect me. From all these years of experience I have become thoroughly informed about the character of the world of spirits and also about the conflict which people who are being regenerated must inevitably undergo if they are to attain the happiness of eternal life. But because nobody from just a general description can be so well informed as to have a faith free from doubt, these matters in the Lord's Divine mercy will therefore be noted in greater detail later on.

7127. 'By no means do I give you straw' means that the most general factual knowledge was no longer made available from that source. This is clear from the meaning of 'by no means giving' as no longer supplying; and from the meaning of 'straw' as the most general factual knowledge of all, dealt with in 7112. What these words imply has been stated [in that paragraph] above. But in addition to this it should be mentioned that in the next life the ones who toss straw - that is, the most general factual knowledge of all - in the way of the upright whom they molest are primarily people who have belonged to the Church. They are people who convinced themselves that faith alone saved, yet did not lead a life of faith but a life of evil. In the next life these people are the same as they were in the world; they know the arguments that are used to substantiate faith alone, which they say saves a person irrespective of the life he has been leading.

[2] But those substantiations are nothing else than reasonings that agree with the initial proposition; for anything at all, even that which is extremely false, can be substantiated by means of reasonings, and can also be presented to simple persons as the truth by the use of clever speaking and drawing of conclusions. For this purpose those people use chiefly the most general statements of all in the Word, which without the internal sense of the Word can be twisted to support any opinion at all. These kinds of statements are what they toss in the way of those who belong to the spiritual Church; they use such to molest them. But these statements are still no more than 'straw for making bricks'. For those people exclude the absolutely essential virtue, namely charity. They do, it is true, say that the works of charity are the fruits of faith; but they still consider them to be worthless and convince others that regardless of what kind of life a person has led he is saved by faith alone, even during the last hour of his life, and so is saved by faith without its fruits, thus without a life of faith and charity.

[3] So long as such ideas are tossed in their way the upright in the next life possess arguments to fight with and can defend themselves; for they see that reasonings are unsound when the essential virtue, which is charity, is so excluded, and also when they see that such people set no store by the life a person leads. These are the considerations that every single facet of the next life enables them to see, as in broad daylight. These then are the things that are to be understood by the basest kind of factual knowledge, the most general of all, meant by 'straw'. People who have convinced themselves that faith alone saves and yet have led a life of evil are in hell, quite deep down and slightly in front over to the right, from where - as I have heard them - they molest the upright with their reasonings. But being led by the Lord by means of angels, the upright have rejected those reasonings as worthless, and they have also detected the fallacies contained in proofs and arguments based on general truths in the Word.