1335. CONCERNING THOSE SPIRITS WHO VITIATE THE BLOOD There are some spirits who love to go about and continually desire to ridicule what they do not perceive, as spirits ridicule interior and more interior things. There was a certain one, indeed, who continually asserted that it is not so, that is to say, that the Word of the Lord is not to be understood in this but in another manner. Thus he could re-state almost everything said by the Lord, and said elsewhere in the Word, because he had heard that the sense of the letter was nothing, as was said above concerning the twelve thrones and concerning persecutions and miseries [see n. 1321]. Therefore such spirits wanted nothing to be understood according to the sound of the letter, thus deriding and saying that it is not so, and this over and over again. They bear towards the left at a distance, and thus persuade others. It was said of that spirit that he referred to those things in the body which vitiate the blood, for if anything vitiated and noxious inflows into the blood, it then pervades the veins and arteries and thus vitiates the entire mass. The case is the same with those who treat the Lord's Word as if with contempt, because they do not perceive its interiors, loving only those things that are corporeal and material.