Those who are in this kind of profanation, which is hypocritical, differ in this respect, that there are those who have less ability and those who have more ability to conceal the interiors of their mind, that they may not be disclosed, and to shape the exteriors, which pertain to face and mouth, into an expression of sanctity.  When such after death become spirits they appear encompassed with a cloud, in the midst of which is something black, like an Egyptian mummy.  But as they are raised up as it were into the light of heaven, that bright cloud changes to a diabolical duskiness, not from any shining through it, but from a breathing through it, and the consequent disclosing.  In hell, therefore, these are black devils.  The differences in this kind of profanation are known from the blackness, as being more or less horrifying. (A.E., n. 1059.)

V. The Fourth and Fifth Kinds of Profanation

A fourth kind of profanation is to live a life of piety, by frequenting churches, listening devoutly to preachings, observing the sacrament of the Supper, and the other appointed forms of worship, reading the Word at home, and sometimes books of devotion, and habitually praying morning and evening, and yet making the precepts of life that are in the Word, particularly in the Decalogue, of no account, by acting dishonestly and unjustly in business and in judgments for the sake of gain or influenced by friendship; committing whoredom and adultery when lust inflames and urges; burning with hate and revenge against those who do not favor their gain or honor; lying, and speaking evil of the good, and good of the evil, and so on.  When a man is in these evils, and has not been purified from them by turning away from them and hating them, and still worships God devoutly, as has been said above, then he profanes; for he mingles his internals which are impure with externals that are pious, and these he defiles.

For there can be nothing external that does not proceed and have existence from internals.  The actions and speech of man are his externals, and thoughts and volitions are his internals.  Man can speak only from thought, and can act only from volition.  When the life of the thoughts and of the will is infected with craft, cunning, and violence, it must needs be that these, as interior evils of the life, will flow into the speech and actions pertaining to worship and piety, and defile them as filth defiles waters.

This worship is what is meant by “Gog and Magog” (Apoc. xx. 8), and is thus described in Isaiah: 

“What is the multitude of sacrifices unto Me, meat offerings, incense, sabbaths, new moons, appointed feasts, and prayers, when your hands are full of bloods?  Wash you, make you clean, put away the wickedness of your doings . . . ; cease to do evil” (i. 11-19).

This kind of profanation is not hypocritical like the former, because the man who is in it believes that he will be saved by external worship separate from internal, and does not know that the worship by which he can be saved is external worship from internal. (A.E., n. 1061.)