12. The judgment which is executed upon all of a spent Church, takes place to the end that, both generally and individually, the good may be separated from the evil, and the good be raised up into heaven and the evil cast down into hell. Were this not to take place when a Church is consummated, that is, when it is no longer in truths and goods, not one person therein could be saved. That he could not be saved is because he could not be regenerated; and every one is regenerated by means of the truths of faith and the goods of love. To this reason the following is added: that, from the time of the vastation of a Church right on to its consummation, hell surges up to so great an extent as to overshadow the whole angelic heaven, through which regenerative truths and goods descend from the Lord to the men of the earth. Owing to this obscuration, neither any truth of thought from faith, nor any good of will from charity, can penetrate, except through chinks; yea, what does penetrate is perverted either on the way before it reaches man, or else by the man himself when it is in him; that is, the truth is either rejected or falsified, and the good is either quenched or adulterated. In a word, a Church at its end is as it were obsessed by satans. (Those are called satans who take pleasure in falsities, and are delighted with evils.) In order, therefore, that the total damnation which then overhangs every one's head, and menaces him, may be averted, it is necessary that hell, which has raised itself on high, and, as was said, surged up even to heaven, should be removed-not merely suppressed, but also dispersed and subjugated-and then the good separated from the evil, that is, the living from the dead. This separation, and the coincident raising up of the good into heaven, or into the land of the living, and casting down of the evil into hell, or into the land of the dead, is what is called Judgment. That such a judgment was actually executed in the year 1757 on the men of the present Christian Church, was declared, and it has been described, in a separate small work published in London in the year 1758.