284. CONCERNING HELL AND THE INFERNAL CREW After midnight I was awakened twice, and had a vivid vision of what was taking place in the spiritual sphere around me. Someone had been sent forth from the lowest hell, accompanied also by a certain infernal crew who seemed to themselves to be carried round about as if around a kind of globe beneath the feet, around which they marched. They also inquired where there were innocent persons whom they sought with the utmost guile and assiduity. At length that crew, after seeming to themselves to have walked around the globe and to have inquired in vain, supposed they had found an innocent person whom they seemed to themselves to treat in a dreadful manner by their phantasies, and indeed with continued blows and lacerations. Later they also approached me and wanted to transfer me from one place to another in order that one of them might speak with me and so pervert me by his deceits; but by the mercy of God Messiah I was safe. Still I perceived in what a subtle manner he could by a wonderful influx pervert my thoughts, so that whatever was good he would bend into another sense, and substitute something poisonous, as it were: for the worst nature of those in hell is such that although they do not know what good is, still owing to their nature being contrary, they are keenly sensitive of its presence, and in a moment pervert it.