{Footnote 1} A life of piety separated from a life of charity is of no avail, but united with charity it is profitable for all things (n. 8252, 8253).  Charity to the neighbor consists in doing what is good, just, and right in every work and in every employment (n. 8120-8122).  Charity to the neighbor takes in all things and each thing that a man thinks, wills, and does (n. 8124).  A life of charity is a life in accordance with the Lord’s commandments (n. 3249).  Living in accordance with the Lord’s commandments is loving the Lord (n. 10143, 10153, 10310, 10578, 10645).  Genuine charity claims no merit, because it is from interior affection and consequent delight (n. 2371, 2380, 2400, 3816, 3887, 6388-6393).  Man continues to be after death such as was his life of charity in the world (n. 8256).  Heavenly blessedness flows in from the Lord into a life of charity (n. 2363).  Mere thinking admits no one into heaven; it must be accompanied by willing and doing good (n. 2401, 3459).  Unless doing good is joined with willing good and thinking good there is no salvation nor any conjunction of the internal man with the external (n. 3987).

536.  LVI.  The lord rules the hells.

Above, in treating of heaven it has been everywhere shown (especially in n. 2-6) that the God of heaven is the Lord, thus that the whole government of the heavens is the Lord’s government.  And as the relation of heaven to hell and of hell to heaven is like the relation between two opposites which mutually act contrary to each other, and from the action and re-action of which an equilibrium results, which gives permanence to all things of their action and reaction, so in order that all things and each thing may be kept in equilibrium it is necessary that He who rules the one should rule the other; for unless the same Lord restrained the uprisings from the hells and checked insanities there the equilibrium would perish and everything with it.

537.  But something about that equilibrium shall first be told.  It is acknowledged that when two things mutually act against each other, and as much as one reacts and resists the other acts and impels, since there is equal power on either side, neither has any effect, and both can then be acted upon freely by a third.  For when the force of the two is neutralized by equal opposition the force of a third has full effect, and acts as easily as if there were no opposition. [2] Such is the equilibrium between heaven and hell.  Yet it is not an equilibrium like that between two bodily combatants whose strength is equal; but it is a spiritual equilibrium, that is, an equilibrium of falsity against truth and of evil against good.  From hell falsity from evil continually exhales, and from heaven truth from good.  It is this spiritual equilibrium that causes man to think and will in freedom; for whatever a man thinks and wills has reference either to evil and falsity