who were in such a belief, to whom the trial was permitted in order that they might know that repentance after death is not possible.
Some of those with whom the trial was made, understood truths, and seemed to receive them; but as soon as they turned to the life of their love, they rejected them and even spoke against them. Some rejected them immediately, being unwilling to hear them. Some were desirous that the life of the love which they had contracted in the world, might be taken away from them, and that angelic life, or the life of heaven, might be infused in its place. This also by permission was accomplished for them; but when the life of their love was taken away, they lay as if dead, having no longer the use of any of their faculties.
From these and other experiments the simple good were instructed that no one's life can possibly be changed after death; and that evil life can by no means be changed into good life, nor infernal life into angelic, since every spirit from head to foot is of the same quality as his love, and therefore of the same quality as his life; and that to transmute this life into the opposite, were to destroy the spirit altogether. The angels declare that it were easier to change a bat into a dove, or an owl into a bird of paradise, than an infernal spirit into an angel of heaven.
From these considerations it may now be manifest, that no one can be received into heaven by an act of immediate mercy. (H. H. 521-527.)
