3217. At length, I was prompted to speak about certain things written and published by me concerning the devil*-that he had been created before the creation of the world as a link between heavenly and bodily things (these were supported also by the fact that they could not have been written differently, because the whole Christian world does not believe otherwise), and that he had been created a good angel, but afterwards fell, and was cast down from heaven, among other things. Then, because these were the principles of nature worshippers, he seized upon them so eagerly, that he said he had never had such life, so it was as if he was let into his true life, for it had been his nature to seize upon these principles in the life of the body, to confirm himself in them and to convince himself of them. And I was able to observe that poisons coming out of him were spread about to the spirits, for being bound to him, so to speak, by his effluvia, they could hardly have thought differently. * Cf. The Worship and Love of God 69 ff., The Word Explained 55, 1848 ff., 1923.