276. Those who believe that their own intelligence can enable them to acquire knowledge about God, heaven and hell, and the spiritual ideas relating to the church, are unaware that the natural man considered in himself is opposed to the spiritual man; and consequently he wants to root out or entangle in fallacies the spiritual ideas which enter his mind. These fallacies resemble the worms which devour the roots of vegetables and grain-crops. Such people can be compared to dreamers who imagine they are mounted on eagles and soaring high; or on winged horses flying over the hill of Parnassus to Helicon. In fact they are like Lucifers in hell, who even there still call themselves the sons of the dawn (Isa. 14:12). They are also like those in the valley of the land of Shinar, who set out to build a tower, the top of which should reach heaven (Gen. 11:2, 4). They are as self-confident as Goliath, little foreseeing that, like him, they could be laid low by a sling-stone striking their forehead. I will describe the fate which awaits them after death: first of all they become as if drunk, then as if out of their minds, and finally idiots, sitting in darkness. Let them beware therefore of such a madness.