Spiritual Life and the Word of God

een explained. Now follows the explanation of the

that the chaste love of marriage is the fundamental love of all heavenly and Divine loves; consequently so far as a man is in the love of adultery he is in every evil love, if not in act yet in endeavor; and on the other hand, so far as he is in the chaste love of marriage he is in every good love, if not in act yet in endeavor? Who at this day can believe that

abominations, and thus comes into the belief that marriages and adulteries do not differ in their essence, but only as a matter of order, and yet the difference between them is like the difference between heaven and hell. That such is the difference between them will be se

sensual man, and after death an infernal spirit; for, as has been said above, adultery is hell, and thus an adulterer is a form of hell. And since adultery is hell it follows that unless a man abstains from adulteries and shuns them and turns away from them as infernal he shuts up heaven to himself, and does not receive the least influx therefrom. Afterward he reasons that marriages and adulteries are alike, but that marriages must be maintained in kingdoms for the sake of order and the training of offspring; also that adulteries are not criminal, since children are

s called in the Word a "Bridegroom" and a "Husband," and the church a "bride" and a "wife." It is from this marriage that the church is a church in general and in particular. The church in particular is

, and truth is a man, and from this is the conjunction that is called the heavenly marriage, and from tha

ne, and exists in those who are in the conjunction of good and truth fro

, and He in the

conjunction of the two minds into one. This conjunction is the spiritual marriage from which marriage love descends. For when two minds are so conjoined as to be one mind there is love between them; and when this love, which is the love of spiritual marriage, descends into the body it becomes the love of natural marriage. That this is so anyo

arriage of evil and falsity, which in its essence is hell. Heaven is a marriage because all who are in the heavens are in a marriage of good and truth; and hell is adultery

angels in the third heaven are likenesses of God; and all angels in the second heaven are images of God. Man can become the love which is an image or likeness of God only by a marriage of good and truth; for good and truth inmostly

good; therefore in them a conjunction of good and truth is possible. For marriage love which descends from that conjunction is the veriest medium by which man (homo) becomes the love that is an image or likeness of God. For the married pa

and the feet one in respect to walking. So with the other pairs with man. All these have reference to good and truth, the organ or member on the right to good, and that on the left to truth. It is the same with a husband and wife between whom there is a true marriage love; th

rd, and not fully except by a marriage of two minds and two bodies. From this it is clear why marriages are heavenly and adulteries infernal; for marriage is an image of heaven, and true marriage love is an image of the Lord, while adultery is an image of hell, and love of adultery is an im

n, for they are forms of heaven. All the members devoted to generation in both sexes, especially the womb, correspond to societies of the third or inmost heaven, and for the reason that true marriage love is derived from the Lord's love for the church, and from the love of good and truth which is the love of the angels of the third he

d pure marriage love, and are not to be profaned by the unchaste and impure love of adultery, by which man converts the heaven in himself into hell; for as the love o

him into a form of the Divine love, which is the form of heaven, and is an image of the Lord. But the love of adultery has its beginning in the outmosts of man from an impure lascivious fire there, and thus, contrary to order, penetrates towa

espond to the Word. The reason is that the Word is Divine truth united to Divine good going forth from the Lord; and this is why the Lord is called "the Word," also why in every particular of the Word t

o account of Divine truths and thus of the Word, and if they were to speak from the heart they would even blaspheme the holy things that are in the Word. This the

with the charms of life; while the love of adultery is represented in the spiritual world by an old woman, whose deformity is such as to inspire in the beholder a coldness and death to every charm of life. Therefore in the heavens the angels are beautiful according to the quality of marriage love in them, and in the hells

ry are there represented to the sense by the stenches from excrements and putridities of various kinds. Moreover, the delights of the love of adultery are actually turned in

filled with inhabitants; and as the end of the entire creation is the human race, and thus heaven, where the Divine itself may dwell as in its own and as it were in itself, and as the procreation of mankind according to Divine order is accomplished through marriages, it is clear how holy marri

ges because marriage is from the marriage of good and truth, from which heaven in its whole complex is called a marriage. That is called adultery where its love, which

vens consist of societies arranged according to all the varieties of celestial and spiritual affections, from which arrangement the form of heaven springs, and this pre-eminently surpasses all other forms in the universe. There would be a like form on the earth i

urch, "gardens" intelligence, "fruits" goods of life, and "paradise" heaven. I have been told from heaven that with the most ancient people, from whom the first church on this globe was established, which was called by ancient writers the golden age, there was such a correspondence between famil

which a love of adultery springs. The ruling love of parents by means of a germ from it passes over into the offspring and is transcribed upon it and becomes its nature. If the love of the parents is a love of adultery it is also a love of evil for falsity and of falsity for evil. From this source man has all evil, and from evil he has hel

count of hereditary evils, but only on account of the evils that the man has actually made his own by his life, as can be seen from the lot of infants after death, all of whom are adopted b

in them and by doing them from a love for them. Every man who does this becomes an adulterer. Moreover, it is from Divine justice that no one suffers punishments on account of the evils of his parents, but onl

ses, thus of evil-doing; and the delights of the love of marriage from the delights of doing good uses, thus of well-doing. Therefore such as the delight of the evil is in doing evil such is the delight of their love of adultery; because a love of adultery descends therefrom. That it descends from that scarcely anyone can believe; and yet such is

been described. But the difference can be discerned and felt only by one who is in the delight of marriage love. One who is in that delight plainly feels that in the delight of marriage there is nothing impure or unchaste, thus nothing lascivious; and that in the delight of adu

e delights of these two loves are alike in outward appearance, although inwardly they are wholly unlike, because opposites, the Lord provides that the delights of adultery shall not ascend into heaven and th

natural love of marriage as a cause is in its effect. So from the marriage of good and truth there comes forth a love of bearing fruit, that is, good

l love of adultery as a cause is in its effect. So from the marriage of evil and falsity by love there comes forth a love of bearing fruit, namely, evil throu

together into the effort and thus into the act of bringing forth uses; and these joys increase in an ascending degree to eternity, according to the goodness and excellence of the uses. This make evident why the p

nly delight, so the delight of adultery is an infernal delight, so the delight of adultery is from a certain impure fire, which as long as it lasts, counterfeits the delight of the love of good, but in itself it is the delight of the love of evil, which is in its essence the delight of hatred against good and truth. And because this is its origin there is not love between a

its delight burnt out, so by degrees the life of mutual discourse and intercourse expired, and hatred came forth, manifested first as contempt, afterward as aversion, then as rejection, and finally as abuse and cont

and devilish hatred they rage against heaven, especially against those who are from heaven and who worship the Lord; for they violently burn to slaughter them, and because they cannot destroy their bodies they desire to destroy their souls. It is, therefore, the delight of hatred which, becoming a fire in the extremes and bein

Lord and from love toward the neighbor. This fire, which from its origin is heavenly, is full of innumerable delights, as many, in fact, as are the delights and blessednesses of heaven. It has been told me that the charms and pleasantnesses of that love, which are manifested from time to time, are so many and such that they cann

Lord loves heaven and the church. Such a love can come forth only through a marriage in which the man is truth and the wife is good. When a man through marriage has become such a love he is also in love to the Lord and in love toward the neighbor, and thus in a love for all good and in a love for all truth. For from man as a love loves of every kind must proceed; the

ainst the neighbor, and in general against every good and truth of heaven and the church; therefore to it all infelicities belong, for, as has been said before, from adulteries man becomes a form of hell, and from the love of adulteries he becomes an image of the devil. That from the marriages in which there is true marriage

and the church; and from this it follows that true marriage love in its first essence is love to the Lord. And from this it is that no one can be in true marriage love and in its pleasantnesses, delights, blessings, and joys, u

doing the commandments is loving the Lord. To them the Lord's commandments are the truths in which they receive Him. There is conjunction of the Lord with them, and of them with the Lord;

n himself, or he is so much in heaven, as he is in marriage love, because he is so far in innocence. It is because true marriage love is innocence that the playfulness between a married pair is like the play of little children; and this is so in the measure in which they love each other, as is evident in the case of all in the first days after the nupt

l love of all the loves of heaven, so peace itself has its seat chiefly in marriage love. Peace is bliss of heart and soul arising from the conjunction of the Lord with heaven and the church, as well as from conjunction of good and truth, when all conflict and combat of evil and falsity with good and truth has ceased. And as marriage love descends from such conjunction so all the delight of that love descends and de

ural from its spiritual; and from the marriage of good and truth the angels of the three heavens have all their intelligence and wisdom; for intelligence and wisdom are nothing else than the reception

wonderful, as they turn the face to their consort they are to the same extent in a state of wisdom; for the conjunction of truth and good is effected in the spiritual world by looking; and the wife there is good and the husband truth; therefore as

rriage love man has heaven and the church; consequently as the Lord unceasingly protects heaven and the church from the evils and falsities that rise up from the hells, so He protects all who are in true marriage love, because such and no others have heaven and the church. For heaven and the chu

ecoming maidens. Each of the married pair returns to the flower and joy of the age when marriage love begins to exalt the life with new delights, and to inspire playfulness for the sake of prolification. The man w

and the church, and thus from the love of good for truth and truth for good, which loves are the source of every joy in the heavens. Man thus grows young in heaven because he then enters into the marriage of good and truth; and in good there is the conatus [instinct] to love truth continually, and in truth there is the con

in the heavens, although the married pair have consociations there like those on the earth, children are not born, but instead of children goods and truths, and thus wisdom, as has been said above. And this is why births, nativities, and generations mean in the Word, in its spiritual sense, spiritual births, nativities, and generations, and sons and daughters mean the truths and goods

h the face things that do not belong to one's affection; consequently their faces are types of their minds. When, therefore, they have marriage love, and love of wisdom, these loves in them give form to their faces, and

quently what the good works of chastity are that a man does who shuns adulteries as sins against God. The good works

wisdom, innocence and peace, power and protection against the hells and against the evils and the falsities therefrom,

d softened in parents who shun adulteries as infernal and love marriages as heavenly. The good works of chastity that concern the heavenly societies are that chaste marriages are the charms of heaven, that they are its nurseries, and that they are its supports. They supply charms to heaven

ve chastely in marriages there are the insanities and follies that those have who are in adulteries; in place of the innocence and peace that those have who live in chaste marriages there are the deceit and no peace that those have who are in adulteries; in place of the power and protection against the hells that those have who live chastely in marriages there are the very Asmodean demons and the hells that those have who live in adu

d. An angel in heaven or a man in the church who does not thus make one with the rest is not of heaven or of the church. Moreover, in the whole heaven and in the whole world there are two things to which all things have reference; these two are called good and truth, from which, when joined into

to be the understanding of truth, and the wife so created as to be the will of good, and thus the husband to be a tr

r for one man (vir) to be inmostly united to two women. Inmost union is like that of soul and heart; the soul of the wife is the husband, and the heart of the husband is the wife. The husband communicates and conjoins his soul to the wife by actual love; it is in his seed; and the wife receives it in her heart, and from this the two become one, and then each and all things in the body of the one loo

gs of the body so correspond to each and all things of the mind that whatever the mind wills and thinks the body at its command instantly brings forth into act. When, therefore, two minds

good in truth and the life of truth in good, and are like the pairs in man, that is, like the two hemispheres of the brain enclosed in one membrane, the two ventricles of the heart within a common covering, likewise the two lobes of the lungs; these, although they are two, yet are one in regard to life and the

rely natural there is no marriage from a spiritual origin, which is of good and truth, but only a marriage from a natural origin; therefore there is no union of minds, but only a union of bodies from a lascivious disposition in the flesh; and this lust is from a universal law impressed upon and thus implanted in everything animate and inanimate from creation. The law is t

ose from the milder evils and their falsities are milder; for adulteries correspond to adulterations of good and consequent falsifications of truth; adulterations of good are in

in regard to life, for in such there is no conjunction of evil and falsity, but only in the former. That sphere flows forth particularly from priests who have taught falsely and lived wickedly; for these have adulterated and falsified the Word. Although such were not adulterers

; and good separated from truth is not good, but inwardly regarded is evil. Consequently in the Christian religion there is doctrine of falsity and evil, from which origin a desire and inclination for adultery from hell flow in; and this is why adulteries are believed in the Christian world to be allowable, and are practiced without shame. For, as has been said above, the conjunction of evil and falsity is spiritual adultery,

from his wife and consequent intranquility of life, from fear of chastisement by the servants of the injured husband, from poverty, or from avarice; from infirmity arising from abuse or from age or impotence or disease; in fact, when one abstains because of any natural or moral law, and does not at the same time abstain because of the Di

ns who did not regard them as wicked and yet abstained from them because the resulting bad name would turn away suitors. These latter I saw encompassed w