3549. THAT EVIL SPIRITS MAY BE DISPERSED BY THOSE WHO ARE SIMPLY KEPT BY THE LORD IN THE KNOWLEDGES OF FAITH. It is now perceived by experience that evil spirits will recede and remain in an inability to speak or think or communicate ought of themselves to me, so long as I am kept simply in the faith of universal knowledges; for it is given to say to them that it is of no use to urge objections, but that if they are so ingenious they ought rather to discuss the objections and doubts, arising from the knowledges of faith in which I am now held and kept; but all the spirits are as dumb as if they had retired; indeed some of them have retired, as I am given to understand. Hence it appears, that they who believe in simplicity, as for instance, that the Lord rules the universe, that the Lord alone is life, that their proprium is nothing but evil, and who do not admit objections from whence come doubt - that with them evil spirits are dispersed, for with such an one they cannot be, as I perceived that they themselves also think. - 1748, October 12.