这代表了对古代教会的审判的下一步--推而广之，也代表了我们所有人在摆脱邪恶、努力变得更好时所经历的过程。在上一节中，主进入、净化并保护了那个仍有向善之心的教会的残余部分。在这里，我们看到那些被邪恶的欲望和错误的想法所证实的反击的开始。

城里的人 "代表那些被确认为错误信仰的人；"所多玛的人 "代表那些被确认为邪恶欲望的人；"老的、少的、从各处来的 "指他们所有人。房子 "代表被主保护的余民内心对善的渴望，他们 "包围 "房子的事实表明他们反对和憎恨这种对善的渴望。

在受诱惑的时候，我们内心也会遭受类似的冲突，因为我们自己的邪恶欲望和错误的信念会聚集在一起，反对我们向善的愿望。

(参考: 属天的奥秘2345)

1900. 'Go in now to my servant-girl' means a joining to the more exterior man. This too is clear from what has been stated already - that the rational part of man's mind is conceived and begotten from the internal man as its father and from the exterior as its mother. Man's very life springs from the internal man, which cannot have any communication with the external, other than a very obscure communication, until the formation of recipient vessels belonging to the memory has been effected by means of cognitions and knowledge.

[2] The influx of the internal man occurs as an influx into the cognitions and factual knowledge that are present in the exterior man - affection being the means. Meanwhile, before they are present, a communication does indeed exist, but solely through those affections that control the external man; so that not more than very general stirrings and certain appetites occur there, and also certain blind inclinations such as reveal themselves in small children. But this life grows by degrees more definite as vessels are formed in the memory by means of cognitions and in the inner memory by rational concepts. As these vessels are formed and arranged into a sequence - into such a sequence in fact that they stand mutually related to one another like blood relatives and relatives by marriage, or like communities and families - so the correspondence is perfected of the external man with the internal man, and even better so through rational concepts, which are intermediate.

[3] But if the cognitions by means of which those vessels are formed are not truths, a lack of congruity still exists, for the celestial and spiritual things belonging to the internal man do not discover any correspondence for themselves except within truths. Such truths constituting the organic forms of the two memories ¹ are the genuine vessels into which the celestial things of love and the spiritual things of faith may be introduced fittingly; for when they are so introduced they are arranged by the Lord according to the pattern and image of the communities of heaven, that is, of the Lord's kingdom - insomuch that the person becomes, in miniature, heaven or the Lord's kingdom, as also in the Word the minds of those people are called in whom the celestial things of love and the spiritual things of faith are present. But these matters have been stated for the benefit of those minds that like to go more deeply.

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