After midnight I awoke twice, and was having a vivid vision of what was going on in the spiritual realm around me, and there was someone let out of the lowest hell accompanied by some also infernal gang that seemed to be carried about in a kind of circle under the feet, around which they were marching in search of [something]. It was innocents they were looking for, and this with all cunning and eagerness. At length that gang, after seeming to themselves to walk a complete circle and to have sought in vain, finally thought they had come upon an innocent, whom they seemed to themselves in fantasy to treat in dreadful ways, inflicting ceaseless blows and lacerations. Finally they also approached me and wanted to transfer me from one place to another, as one of them said, and then to corrupt me with their deceits, but by the mercy of God the Messiah, I was kept safe. Still, I perceived how subtly they were able to distort my thinking, through a most remarkable influence that bent whatever was good in a different direction, replacing it with something like poison. For the very evil character of those in hell is such that although they do not know what goodness is, they nevertheless sense its presence by means of their contrary character, and corrupt it in a moment.