freedom,—for who cannot think from a free principle in the manner just described? But when he has made a beginning, the Lord works in him for the production of all kinds of good, and enables him not only to see his evils, but also not to will them, and finally to abhor them. This is meant by the Lord's words: "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light," Matt. xi. 30.
But it is to be observed, that the difficulty of so thinking, and also of resisting evils, increases in proportion as man from the will commits evils; for so far as he does this, he becomes accustomed to them, until at length he does not see them, and at last comes to love them, and from the delight of love to excuse them, and by all sorts of fallacies to confirm them, declaring them to be allowable and good. But this occurs with those who at the age of maturity plunge into evils as if regardless of all restraint, and at the same time reject divine things from the heart.
There was once represented to me the way which leads to heaven, and that which leads to hell. There was a broad way tending to the left, or toward the north; and there appeared many spirits walking in it; but at a distance was seen a stone of considerable magnitude, where the broad way terminated. From that stone there then branched off two ways, one to the left and one in an opposite direction, to the right. The way that turned to the left was narrow or strait, leading through the west to the south, and so into
