wealth, therefore, for fear of losing them he strengthens the means at
hand--whether civil or churchly and in either case means to power--which
serve him for position and wealth. The man who does not yet have standing
or wealth but aspires to them, does the same, but for fear he will lose
the reputation they give.

[6] It was said that this fear seizes on the external of thought and
closes the internal above to heaven's inflowing. The internal is said to
be closed when it makes one completely with the external, as it is then
not in itself but in the external.

[7] But as the loves of self and the world are infernal loves and the
fountain-heads of all evils, it is plain what the internal of thought in
itself is like with men in whom those loves reign and are their life's
loves, namely, that it is full of lusts of evils of every kind.

[8] This men do not know who fear loss of place and opulence and are
strongly persuaded of their special religion, most particularly if this
promises that they may be worshiped as holy and also as governors of
hell; they can blaze, as it were, with zeal for the salvation of souls
and yet this is from infernal fire. As this fear especially takes away
rationality itself and liberty itself, which have a heavenly origin,
plainly it makes against the possibility that a man may be reformed.

140. No one is reformed in a _state of misfortune_ if he thinks about God
and implores help only then, for it is a coerced state; wherefore, on
coming into a free state he returns to his former state when he thought
little if at all about God. It is different with those who feared God in
a state of freedom previously. For by "fearing God" is meant fearing to
offend Him, and by "offending Him" to sin, and this comes not from fear