Repentance of the mouth and not of the life is not repentance. Nor are sins pardoned on repentance of the mouth, but on repentance of the life. Sins are constantly pardoned man by the Lord, for He is mercy itself; but still they adhere to man, however he supposes they have been remitted. Nor are they removed from him save by a life according to the precepts of true faith. So far as he lives according to these precepts, sins are removed; and so far as they are removed, so far they are remitted.

—Heavenly Doctrine, nn. 159-165

TEMPTATION AND PRAYER

When a man shuns evils as sins, he flees them because they are contrary to the Lord and to His Divine laws; and then he prays to the Lord for help and for power to resist them—a power which is never denied when it is asked. By these two means a man is cleansed of evils. He cannot be cleansed of evils if he only looks to the Lord and prays; for then, after he has prayed, he believes that he is quite without sins, or that they have been forgiven, by which he understands that they are taken away. But then he still remains in them; and to remain in them is to increase them. Nor are evils removed only by shunning them; for then the man looks to himself, and thereby strengthens the origin of evil, which was that he turned himself back from the Lord and turned to himself.

—The Doctrine Concerning Charity, n. 146

THE GREAT ARENA

In temptations the hells fight against man, and the Lord for him. To every falsity which the hells inject, there is an answer from the Divine. The falsities inflow into the outward man, the answer into the inward man, coming to perception scarcely otherwise than as hope, and the resulting consolation, in which, however, there is a multitude of things of which the man is unaware.

—Arcana Coelestia, n. 8159

In temptations a man is left, to all appearance, to himself alone; yet he has not been left alone, for God is then most present in his inmost being, and upholds him. When anyone overcomes in temptation, therefore, he enters into closer union with God.

—True Christian Religion, n. 126