12. The judgment which is executed upon all of a past church, takes place, both generally and individually, to the end that the good may be separated from the evil, and that the good may be raised up into heaven and the evil cast down into hell. Unless this were done when a church is consummated, that is, when it is no longer in truths and goods, not anyone therein could be saved. That he could not be saved is because he could not be regenerated; and everyone is regenerated by 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 even to its consummation, hell increases to so great an extent as to stretch under the whole angelic heaven, through which the regenerating truths and goods descend from the Lord to the men of the earth. When this is covered over, no truth of thought from faith nor good of will from charity can penetrate, except as it were through chinks; yea, what does penetrate is perverted either in 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 clogged up 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 is then over everyone's head, and menaces him, may be taken away, it is necessary that hell, which has raised itself on high, and, as was said, increased even to heaven, should be removed, not merely depressed, but also dispersed and subjugated, and then the good separated from the evil, that is, the living from the dead. This separation, and then the elevation of the good into heaven, or into the land of the living, and the casting down of the evil into hell, or into the land of the dead, is what is called the judgment. That such a judgment was actually executed in the year 1757 on the men of the present Christian Church, has been published and described, in a special little work published in London in the year 1758.