226. II. IF A MAN AFTERWARDS DEPARTS FROM THESE AND TURNS ASIDE INTO WHAT IS CONTRARY, HE PROFANES HOLY THINGS. There are many kinds of profanation of what is holy, and these will be treated in the following section; but this kind is the most grievous of all; for profaners of this kind after death come to be no longer men. They indeed live, but are continually subject to fantastic hallucinations, appearing to themselves to be flying on high; and while they remain there they sport with fantasies which they see as real things; and as they are no longer men they are not called "he and she" but "it". Indeed, when they are presented to view in the light of heaven they appear like skeletons, some like skeletons of the colour of bone, some as fiery skeletons and some as scorched. It is not known in the world that profaners of this kind become like this after death; and it is not known for the reason that the cause is not known. The real cause is that when a man at first acknowledges Divine things and believes in them and afterwards departs from them and denies them, he mingles what is holy with what is profane; and when these have been mingled together they cannot be separated without destroying the whole. However, in order that these things may be more clearly perceived they shall be explained in the following order:
1. Whatever a man thinks, speaks and does from his will, whether good or evil, is appropriated to him, and remains. 2. But the Lord by His Divine Providence continually foresees and disposes, that evil may be by itself and good by itself and thus that they may be separated. 3. This cannot be done if man first acknowledges the truths of faith and lives according to them, and afterwards departs from them and denies them. 4. He then mingles good and evil to such a degree that they cannot be separated. 5. And since the good and the evil in every man must be separated, and in such a person they cannot be separated, therefore he is destroyed as to everything that is truly human.
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