562. The people before the flood were such that at last they had almost no remains, because they were of such a genius that they became imbued with direful and abominable persuasions concerning all things that occurred to them or came into their thought, so that they would not go back from them one whit, for they were possessed with the most enormous love of self, and supposed themselves to be as gods, and that whatever they thought was Divine. No such persuasion has ever existed in any people before or since, for it is deadly or suffocative, and therefore in the other life the antediluvians cannot be with any other spirits, for when they are present they take away from them all power of thought by injecting their fearfully determined persuasions, not to mention other matters which of the Lord's Divine mercy shall be spoken of in what follows.