3747. I was instructed that from the success of their affairs in the life of the body, they had contracted the persuasion that they were to attribute everything to their own prudence; wherefore it was said that they are not punished on the instant of their coming into the other life, because of their being in this persuasion, for thus they would be utterly broken down, but that it is done by degrees, that they may thus be restored from their persuasion, and instructed. It is a punishment sufficiently severe [to be obliged] to dwell with dragons, which are flying serpents. These, however, were not deceitful; with the deceitful it fares worse.