The same deceitful spirits [were present] while I was writing about the symbolic Church to the effect that there were only superficial things through which holy inner qualities were symbolized. One said that he could not understand them, although he was able to understand. But by means of visual spiritual mental images and displays I was enabled to reply to him that what we see are only the hulls or outermost coverings, while it is the inward things that are everything of them. I was allowed to display a tree to him, whose leaves are all that appear, then an apple, which we see only on the outside, when yet within it there are fibers similar to trees if unfolded, there are saps, purer and purer, there are the hulls of seeds, there are the seeds which inwardly store its purest [essences], and these we do not see. Such is his thought-only some outer little skins. 1748, 21 Aug.