2041. It hence results that not only are they less intelligent in regard to spiritual things from their inhering in material ideas or words, but some may even be led astray in dealing with the Word of the Lord, which from the bare words alone they gather some other than the true sense, and defend and distort it from the love of self; for when the signification of a word is assumed, they then torture the sense into accordance with it, which can be done [as before remarked] in a thousand ways. Hence the spiritual ideas that are falsified by being mixed with material ideas, and which in the other life occasion them impediment and detriment, inasmuch as falsities inhere in material ideas, are to be dispersed. - 1748, May 22.