In these hells
are all who have acknowledged nature and have denied the Divine. In
the deeper of these hells are those that have confirmed themselves in
such denials. As such are unable to receive any thing of light from
heaven, and are thus unable to see any thing inwardly in themselves,
they are for the most part corporeal sensual spirits, who believe
nothing except what they see with their eyes and touch with their
hands. Therefore all the fallacies of the senses are truths to them;
and it is from these that they dispute. This is why their contentions
are heard as gnashings of teeth; for in the spiritual world all
falsities give a grating sound, and the teeth correspond to the
outmost things in nature and to the outmost things in man, which are
corporeal sensual.{1} (That there is gnashing of teeth in the hells
may be seen in Matthew 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke
13:28.)
{Footnote 1} The correspondence of the teeth (n. 5565-5568).
Those who are purely sensual and have scarcely anything of
spiritual light correspond to the teeth (n. 5565). In the Word
a tooth signifies the sensual, which is the outmost of the life
of man (n.
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