Verse 32. And the good affections and good thoughts which you hadst given birth to in your natural life will be under the power of the false principle that rules within you, and your understanding will strive in vain to make use of them in that state: and you will be without the power of doing anything good or thinking anything true.

1271. After this there were certain deceitful spirits who wanted these who had lived before the Flood to come out To enable these to steal their way out, the deceitful spirits put it into their minds to say that they were nothing. At that point I heard a disturbance in that hell like a great. upheaval taking place. It was the commotion caused by those who desired to break free. Once again therefore some of them were allowed to come up from there and they appeared in the same place as their predecessors had done. From there they tried with the help of those deceitful genii to instill their deadly persuasion into me. But it was all to no avail as I was being protected by the Lord. I perceived quite clearly that their persuasion was stifling. They imagined that they had power over all things and could deprive anyone of his life. But because they imagined that they had power over all things it took no more than a small child to thrust them down, whose presence caused them to be so unsteady that they cried out they were in distress, so great in fact that they resorted to prayers. The deceitful ones were also punished, first of all by being almost choked by these who had been allowed out, and after that by being bound up tightly together to make them desist from such practices. But after a while they were set free.