3580. I spoke with them when they were below, and indeed very deep beneath the posteriors, conversing with them thus remotely and profoundly distant altogether as if present, for distance [in the other life] is of no account. I supposed that they had thus confirmed themselves by arguments and reasonings against the truths of faith, and, some, of them, so fully as, by the force of reasonings, to go entirely contrary of faith. But it was given to observe, that this was not so much from their abundance of arguments, as from their persuasion, or the things which they thought, for whatever they thought was persuasive [with them], of which more below.