evils are not removed in the external man, lusts for them intensify; also
that in the degree that evils are given free rein, the lusts increase.

113. A person does not see the lusts of his evil; he sees their
enjoyments, to be sure, but still he reflects little on them, for they
divert thought and drive off reflection. Unless he learned from elsewhere
that they are evils he would call them goods and give them expression
freely according to his thought's reasoning; doing so, he appropriates
them to himself. So far as he confirms them as allowable he enlarges the
court of his ruling love, which is his life's love. Lusts constitute its
court, being its ministers and retinue, as it were, by which it governs
the exteriors of its realm. But such as is the king, such are the
ministers and retinue, and such is the kingdom. If the king is diabolic,
his ministers and the retinue are insanities, and the people of his realm
are falsities of every kind. The ministers (who are called wise although
they are insane) cause these falsities to appear as truths by reasonings
from fallacies and by fantasies and cause them to be acknowledged as
truths. Can such a state in a man be changed except by the evils being
removed in the external man? Then the lusts which cling to the evils are
also removed. Otherwise no outlet offers for the lusts; they are shut in
like a besieged city or like an indurated ulcer.

114. (iv) _Only with man's participation can evils in the external man be
removed by the Lord._ In all Christian churches it is an accepted point
of doctrine that before coming to the Holy Communion a person should
examine himself, see and confess his sins, and do penitence, desisting
from his sins and rejecting them because they are from the devil; and
that otherwise the sins are not forgiven him and he is damned. The
English, despite the fact that they are in the doctrine of faith alone,
nevertheless in the exhortation to the Holy Communion openly teach