391. 8080. [Jer. 5:] verse 6. There are evil spirits, symbolized here by wild animals, who are around us; and when the person is the kind who no longer has any belief, they distort and so to speak tear up anything which might once more instill belief, thus all the articles of faith, or creeds. For then not any thought at all can come to mind which is not thus torn apart. This I can solemnly swear to on the basis of many experiences. For such as one is, so one is treated by spirits, until they have so distorted all beliefs that there is no sanity left. Thus they extinguish all light, turning it into frightening darkness, in which one lives together with one's own evil spirits. This condition grows successively worse in us the more we think we understand things, and the more abundant our knowledge of nature is, thus in the learned of the world more than others, to the extent of their knowledge. For evil spirits arouse more and distort more in a person regarded as learned than in anyone else, and then more firmly fix those distorted ideas, and thereby thicken the shadows so much that the person is almost beyond hope. For all the deeply inhering knots must be untied, and all parts of the shadow dispelled. If they are not dispelled, they remain within as if they were part of the character one has developed from one's own understanding, to the point of conviction. To this I can solemnly swear on the basis of much experience, namely, that spirits are constantly trying to do this, and that they call forth even the tiniest doubts that have crept in from infancy on, endeavoring to distort [all beliefs]. But in the case of the elect, this takes place, as it does during temptations, for the purpose of dispelling the doubts one by one. Therefore, if the learned and the philosophers are to be brought back onto the path, this must be done by sharper and deeper temptation than exists with those who are not learned, etc. etc. I am therefore convinced that we must most humbly beseech God the Messiah that we may not come into temptations, that is, into the kind in which we doubt the Word of God the Messiah, etc. [Educated, Learned, Doctrine; Belief (Faith); Light; Distort (Pervert); Truth]