These spiritual restraints cannot be so well described to the understanding, for they are held in such a way-as I have been enabled to observe with spirits or in the world of spirits that they are so held-that they cannot think as evilly as they incline by their own nature to think, and consequently to act. Thus by the goodness of the Lord they are kept from evil, as if they are being held away suspended from the evil. This also I have been allowed to learn from actual experience, for no sooner was the bond relaxed than the spirit was carried back into the evil, and indeed an enormous one, into both willing the evil and thinking the evil. So it is the Lord Alone Who thus withholds heaven, the world of spirits, and the human race from evil, and in fact if [the bond] should be relaxed, everyone would rush into enormous evil, and even into the destruction of all, likewise also into lies. 1748, 5 Aug.