169.  When the angelic spirits who were from that earth came into view, they accosted us, asking who we were, and what we wanted.  We told them that we were travelling, that we had been transported thither, and that they had nothing to fear from us.  For they were afraid that we were of those who disturb them concerning God, faith, and kindred subjects, on account of whom they had betaken themselves to that quarter of their earth, shunning them as much as possible.  We asked them by what they were disturbed.  They replied, by the idea of Three, and by the idea of the Divine without the Human in God, when they yet know and perceive that God is one, and that He is man.  It was then perceived that those who disturbed them, and whom they shunned, were from our Earth:  this was manifest also from this consideration, that there are spirits from our Earth who thus wander about in the other life, in consequence of their fondness for and delight in travelling, which they have contracted in the world; for on other earths there is no such custom of travelling as on ours.  It was afterwards discovered that they were monks, who had travelled on our globe from a desire to convert the gentiles.  We therefore told them that they did well to shun them, because their intention was, not to teach, but to secure gain and dominion; and that they strive by various means first to captivate men’s minds (animi), and afterwards to subject them to themselves as slaves:  moreover, that they did well in not suffering their idea concerning God to be disturbed by such spirits.  They said further, that these spirits also confuse them by asserting that they ought to have faith, and to believe what they say; but that their reply to them is, that they do not know what faith or believing means, since they perceive in themselves whether a thing be so or not.  They were of the Lord’s celestial kingdom, where all know by interior perception the truths which with us are called the truths of faith, for they are in enlightenment from the Lord; but it is otherwise with those who are in the spiritual kingdom.  That the angelic spirits of that earth were of the Lord’s celestial kingdom, I could also see from the flame whence their ideas flowed; for in the celestial kingdom the light is flaming, and in the spiritual kingdom it is bright white.  They who are of the celestial kingdom, when the discourse is about truths, say no more than Yea, yea, or Nay, nay, and never reason about them whether they be so or not.  These are they of whom the Lord says, “Let your discourse be Yea, yea, Nay, nay; what is beyond this is of evil” [(Matt. v. 37)].  Hence it was that those spirits said that they did not know what it is to have faith or to believe.  They consider this to be like one saying to his companion, who with his own eyes sees houses or trees, that he ought to have faith or to believe that they are houses and trees, when he sees clearly that they are so.  Such are they who are of the Lord’s celestial kingdom, and