422. Some people must indeed be pardoned for having attributed certain visible phenomena to nature, for the...reason...that they have not known anything about the sun of (the spiritual world) where the Lord is, and the influx from it; nor anything about (that) world and its state, nor, indeed, of its presence with man. And therefore they could not help but think that anything spiritual was a purer form of something natural; thinking thus that angels existed either in the stratosphere or in the stars; and in regard to the devil, either that it was the evil in man, of if he actually existed, that he existed either in the air or in the depths of the earth; also that people's souls after death existed either at the center of the earth or in some limbo or other to the Day of Judgment; and other like things, which their fancy persuaded them of owing to their ignorance of the spiritual world and its sun.... (For this reason) they must be pardoned who have believed that nature produces the phenomena they see by a power implanted from creation. However, those who by confirmations on the side of nature have made themselves atheists, cannot be pardoned, because they could have confirmed themselves on the side of the Divine. Ignorance, indeed, excuses, but it does not take away falsity that has been confirmed; for such falsity is bound together with evil, (and evil) with hell....