[2] Can anyone who knows and believes from the church's doctrine * that God is infinite and eternal be so lacking in reason that he does not agree on hearing it that God can then regard only what is infinite and eternal in the great work of His creation? To what else can He look from His infinite being? To what else in mankind of which He forms His heaven? What else can divine providence then have for its end than the reformation and salvation of mankind? No one can be reformed by himself through his prudence; he is reformed by the Lord through His divine providence. Consequently, unless the Lord leads man every least moment the man lapses from the way of reformation and perishes.
* It is the doctrine of all churches in Christendom that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit is infinite, eternal, uncreated and omnipotent, as may be seen in the Athanasian Creed.
[3] Every change or variation in the state of the human mind means a change or variation in a series of things present and to come; what then of progress to eternity? The situation is like that of an arrow shot from a bow, which if it deviated from the target in the least on being aimed would deviate widely at a thousand feet or more. The like would happen if the Lord did not lead the states of the human mind every least moment. The Lord does so according to the laws of His divine providence; it is according to them that it seems to man he leads himself; but the Lord foresees how he leads himself and constantly acts in adaptation. In what follows it will be seen that laws of tolerance are also laws of divine providence, that every man can be reformed and regenerated, and that no other predestination is possible.
203. Since every man lives forever after death and is allotted a place either in heaven or in hell according to his life, and heaven and hell must each be in a form to act as a unit, as we said before, and since no one can be allotted a place in that form other than his own, humanity in all the world is under the Lord's guidance and everyone is led by the Lord from infancy to the close of life in the least things, and his place is foreseen and provided.
[2] Clearly then, the Lord's divine providence is universal by being in the least things, and it is an infinite and eternal creation that He has provided for Himself in creating the world. Man does not espy this universal providence, and if he did, it would look to him like scattered heaps and collections of material for building a house such as passersby see, while the Lord beholds rather a magnificent palace, constantly building and enlarging.
204. (v) Heaven and hell are in the form described. That heaven is in the human form has been made known in the work Heaven and Hell, published in London in 1758 (nn. 59-102), also in the treatise Divine Love and Wisdom, and here and there in the present treatise. I therefore omit further confirmation. Hell is said to be in the human form also, but it is in a monstrous human form, like that of the devil, by whom hell in its entirety is meant. Hell is in the human form inasmuch as those who are in it were born human beings too; they also possess the two human faculties of liberty and rationality, though they have misused liberty by willing and doing evil, and rationality by thinking and confirming evil.
205. (vi) Those who have acknowledged nature alone and human prudence alone make up hell, and those who have acknowledged God and His divine providence make up heaven. All who lead an evil life, inwardly acknowledge nature and human prudence alone. This acknowledgment lies hidden in all evil, however the evil may be veiled by good and truth, which are borrowed raiment, or like wreaths of perishable flowers, put around the evil lest it appear in its nakedness. That all who lead an evil life, inwardly acknowledge nature and human prudence alone is not known because of this general covering hiding it from view. The source and cause of their acknowledgment, however, may make clear that they acknowledge nature and one's own prudence. We shall say, therefore, whence man's own prudence is and what it is; then whence divine providence is and what it is; next who they are respectively, and of what character, who acknowledge divine providence and who acknowledge man's own prudence; and lastly show that those who acknowledge divine providence are in heaven and that those who acknowledge man's own prudence are in hell.
206. Whence man's own prudence is and what it is. It is from man's proprium, which is his nature and is called his soul from his parent. This proprium is self-love and the accompanying love of the world, or it is love of the world and the accompanying self-love. Self-love by nature regards self only and others as cheap or of no account. If it regards any it does so as long as they honor and do it homage. Inmostly in that love, like the endeavor in seed to fructify and propagate, there lies hidden the desire to become great and if possible a king and then possibly a god. A devil is such, for he is self-love itself; he adores himself and favors no one unless he also adores him; another devil like himself he hates, because he in turn wants alone to be adored. Since no love is possible without its consort and the consort of love or of the will in man is called the understanding, when self-love breathes itself into its consort, the understanding, it becomes pride there, which is the pride of self-intelligence, and from this comes man's own prudence.
[2] Inasmuch as self-love wants to be the one lord of the world and thus a god, the lusts of evil which are derived from it have their life from it, so have the perceptions of the lusts, which are schemes; likewise the enjoyments of the lusts, which are evils, and the thoughts of the lusts, which are falsities. All these are like slaves and ministers of their lord, responding to his every nod, unaware that they do not act but are acted upon; they are actuated by self-love through the pride of self-intelligence. Hence man's own prudence because of its origin lies concealed in every evil.
[3] The acknowledgment of nature alone is also hidden in it, for self-love has closed the window overhead through which heaven is plain and the side windows, too, in order not to see or hear that the Lord alone governs all things, that nature in herself is lifeless, and that man's proprium is infernal and consequently love of it is diabolical. With the windows shuttered, self-love is in darkness, builds itself a hearth fire at which it sits with its consort, and the two reason amicably in favor of nature as against God and in favor of man's own prudence as against divine providence.