[2] I was told that as soon as he entered the spiritual world, he was provided with a house like that in which he had lived in the world. (This also happens to most new arrivals, so that they remain unaware of being no longer in the natural world, and the time which has elapsed since they died seems like no more than a sleep.) Everything in his room too was similar; he had a similar table, a similar writing-desk with compartments and also a bookcase. So as soon as he arrived, as if he had just awoken from sleep, he sat down at the table and went on writing; his subject then was justification by faith alone, and he went on thus for some days, with not a word about charity. When the angels perceived this, they sent to ask him why he did not write about charity too. He replied that the church was in no way dependent upon charity, for if charity were accepted as an essential of the church, man would also attribute to himself the merit of justification and so of salvation, thus depriving faith of its spiritual essence.

[3] When this was perceived by the angels who were overhead, and heard by those who had associated with him when he was out of his house, they went away. (Every newcomer has angels associated with him at first.) Some weeks after this had happened, the objects he was using in the room began to grow dim and finally to fade away, until at length nothing was left there but a table, paper and an ink-pot. Moreover, the walls of his room appeared to be covered with whitewash and the floor was paved with yellow brick; he himself wore coarser clothes. When he was surprised at this and asked around to learn the reason, he received the answer that it was because he had banished charity from the church, when in fact it is its heart. But because he so often spoke against it, continuing to write about faith as the one and only essential of the church and the means of salvation, removing charity further and further away, he suddenly found himself in an underground workroom, full of similar people. When he wanted to leave, he was detained, and warned that this is the fate awaiting those who cast charity and good deeds out of the church doors. Still, since he was one of the reformers of the church, he was taken out on the Lord's instructions, and sent back to his previous room, where he had nothing but a table, paper and an ink-pot. Yet the ideas he had convinced himself of made him blot the paper with similar errors; so he could not be kept from being alternately sent down to his companions in prison and at other times being released. When released he appeared to be dressed in furs, since faith without charity is cold.

[4] He told me himself that there was another room adjoining his at the back, containing three tables, at which sat three men who, like him, had also driven charity into exile; and there sometimes a fourth table appeared on which various monstrous forms were to be seen, though these did not frighten them away. He said that he talked with these men, and they convinced him more every day. However, after some time he became fearful and started to compose something about charity, but what he wrote on the paper one day he was unable to read the next. For this is what happens to everyone there, if he draws only on the external man for what he puts on paper, and not on the internal at the same time; he writes then from compulsion, not from free choice, and it is blotted out automatically.

[5] After the Lord began the foundation of the new heaven, the light coming from it made him start thinking that he might perhaps be wrong. So, worrying about his fate, he became aware of some interior ideas about charity which had been impressed on him. In that state he consulted the Word, and then his eyes were opened and he saw that it was completely full of love to God and love towards the neighbour, so that it was as the Lord says, on these two commandments depend the law and the prophets, that is to say, the whole Word. From this time on he was moved further in towards the south-west, and so to another house. From there he spoke with me, and said that now his writing about charity does not fade as it did before, but is dimly visible the next day.

[6] I was surprised that when he walks his footsteps ring out rhythmically, like those of people wearing iron-shod boots walking on a stone surface. I must add that when some newcomers from the world entered his room to see him and talk with him, he summoned one of the spirit magicians, who were able by imagination to produce various pleasant appearances. They then furnished his room with ornaments, rose-coloured carpets, and also a kind of bookcase in the middle. However, as soon as they left, these appearances disappeared, and the former whitewash and emptiness came back. But these events happened when he was in his former state.