(DP) - Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence

DP 147

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147. It will also be briefly stated how the Lord casts out lusts of evil, which beset the internal man from birth, and how He bestows in their place affections of good when a man as of himself removes evils as sins. It was shown before that man has a natural mind, a spiritual mind and a celestial mind; and that he is in the natural mind alone, as long as he is in the lusts of evil and their delight; and that during this time the spiritual mind is closed. But as soon as he, after self-examination, acknowledges evils to be sins against God because they are contrary to Divine laws, and therefore desires to desist from them, the Lord opens the spiritual mind, and enters into the natural mind through affections for truth and good; and He also enters into the rational, and from it disposes in order the things that are contrary to order below it in the natural. This appears to man as a combat and, with those who have indulged much in the delights of evil, as temptation; for there arises grief in the mind (animus) when the order of its thoughts is inverted. Now since the combat is against the things that are in the man himself and that he feels as his own, and no one can fight against himself unless from an interior self and from freedom there, it follows that the internal man then fights against the external, and fights from freedom and forces the external to obedience. This, then, is compelling oneself; and it is clear that this is not contrary to liberty and rationality, but is in accordance with them.

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