4679. CONCERNING THE HELLS. I observed attentively how man devastates and casts himself into hell. There was a heavenly society which the Lord guarded, thus where the Divine of the Lord was. A certain evil one, who was of the worst sort, secretly infested it; and, at length, when he was detected, it was then observed how he was more and more let down into hell; for, meanwhile, because he had been successful, he invented new cunning devices for infesting, and thus associated himself more and more with the hells; and because he was more associated with them, therefore he did the more infest that society. He supposed that he could have refrained; but he was told that he could not, because chained to the hells, and led by those which he had attached to himself. Then was he more and more surrounded with falses thence, which at first appeared like a gross mist, afterwards like waters; and thus he cast himself deeply down. He had been a judge in his time; and, by his cunning, had wrought many evils in that capacity.