Spiritual Experiences (Buss) n. 3714

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3714. During still another day the sirens were with me, and caused me great annoyance, but of what quality they were appeared from this, that when left to themselves they were borne away into things so atrociously obscene that nothing, as I heard, could be more so, and that too among themselves. It may thence be known that there is [with them] no internal bond which shall coerce [their evils], no conscience or acknowledgment [of right], still less the persuasion of anything true and good; but that their interiors are altogether loosed from restraint, not bound except by merely external bonds, such as a regard to decorum and apparent probity, which perhaps influences them more than others. But their interiors are such, so dissolute and relaxed, that provided external bonds were removed, as they are while acting licentiously among themselves, they would rush without horror, without shame, without check from any interior law, into the most abandoned, iniquitous, and obscene acts. Such, at any rate, are their thoughts, for anyone can know from this whether a law of conscience constrains one, viz., that he is unwilling to think of this or that because it is evil, because it is base, because it is obscene, so that when such a thought is suggested he is struck with fear, with shame, with horror, or is in some other way withheld from it. These are the internal bonds by which man is held, but the sirens are restrained by no [such] bond.


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