590. Learned spirits of Europe, who are constantly trying to lead them away from truth and belief in the Lord, held forth that His act of salvation took place in a given time, and almost four thousand years had elapsed before He came into the world, and yet that also previously, spirits had been saved. The spirits of Jupiter could not help laughing at their inventing such charges in regard to Divine matters, since, as they were told, past and present are one with God; for to Him all things are present from eternity to eternity, so that promised and done is the same thing with the Lord. There are other objections besides that they very often raise, wanting to corrupt all spirits, whomsoever they meet. Such are the Europeans, who are called Christians, and in fact inwardly, many are of this character; for in the world, they dissemble, saying one thing with the mouth while bearing something different in the heart. Hereafter, spirits or souls cannot but speak from their acquired character and therefore from the heart, consequently from a life of self-love, which had consisted of nothing but passions, with the result that their understanding, so-called, had consisted of nothing but falsities. For there is no other power of reasoning that stays with people [after death] but what springs from their love, so that such as the love is in the body, such is the life, and such is the behavior. That love is recognized in the other life so easily that nothing is easier. When they utter but one word, or when they divulge, or only think, one mental image, their whole spirit is exposed at once, as well as what they had been like in bodily life. So they are put in the company of similar spirits, who all act in conjunction.