Posts

SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD - { PT. 77 }

Image
{ PT.  77 } - The innocence of marriage love is meant in the Word by the nakedness at which Adam and his wife blushed not; and for the reason that there is nothing of shame, between a married pair, any more than between little children when they are naked together. ( A.E., n. 996 ). Since marriage love in its first essence is love to the Lord from the Lord, and thus is innocence, marriage love is also peace, such as angles in the heavens have. For as innocence is the very being ( esse ) of all good, so peace is the very being ( esse ) of all delights from good, consequently is the very being ( esse ) of all joy between the married pair. As, then, all joy is of love, and marriage love is the fundamental 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 falsit...
Post a Comment
Read more

SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD - { PT. 76 }

Image
  { PT.  76 } - To them 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; for they are in the Lord because they are in good, and the Lord is in them because they are in truths. This is the heavenly marriage, from which true marriage love descends. ( A. E., n. 995 ). As true marriage love in its first essence is love to the Lord from the Lord it is also innocence. Innocence is loving the Lord as one's Father by doing His commandments and wishing to be led by Him and not by oneself, thus like a little child. As that love is innocence, it is very being ( esse ) of all good; and therefore man has so much of heaven in himself, or he is so much in heaven in 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 l...
Post a Comment
Read more

SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD

Image
  { PT.  75} - That from the marriages in which there is true marriage love all delights and felicities increase even till they become the delights and felicities of the inmost heaven, and that all that is undelightful and unhappy in the marriages in which love of adultery reigns increases in direfulness even to the lowest hell, can be seen in the work on Heaven and Hell ( n. 386 ). ( AS.E., n. 993 ). True marriage love is from the Lord alone. It is from the Lord alone because it descends from the Lord's love for heaven and the church, and thus from the love of good and truth; for good is from the Lord, and truth is in heaven 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, unless he acknowledge the Lord alone, that is, that the trinity is in Him. One who approaches the Father as a person by Himself, or...
Post a Comment
Read more

SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD

Image
  For from man as a love loves of every kind must proceed; therefore marriage love is the fundamental love of all the loves of heaven. And as it is the fundamental love of all the loves of heaven it is also the foundation of all the delights and joys of heaven, since every delight and joy is of love. From this it  follows that heavenly joys, in their order and in their degrees, have their origins and their causes in marriage love. From the felicities of marriage a conclusion may be drawn respecting the infelicities of adulteries, namely, that the love of adultery is the fundamental love of all infernal loves, which are in themselves not loves, but hatreds, consequently from the love of adultery hatreds of every king gush forth, both against God and against the neighbor, and in general against every good the 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 adul...
Post a Comment
Read more

SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD - { PT. 73 }

Image
{ PT.  73 } - This is a fire enkindled from a love of good and truth and from a delight in well-doing, thus from love to the Lord and from love toward their 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 had been told me that the charms and pleasentnesses of that love, which are manifested from time to time, are so many and such that they cannot be numbered or described. Moreover, they are multiplied with continued increase to eternity. These delights have their origin in the fact that the married pair wish to be united into one in respect to their minds, and into such a union heaven breaths from the marriage of good and truth from the Lord in heaven. ( A.E., n. 992 ). That true marriage love contains in itself ineffable delights that can neither be numbered nor described can be seen from the fact that this is the fundamental love of all celestial and spiritual loves, sin...
Post a Comment
Read more

SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD - { PT. 72 }

Image
  { PT.  72 } - And what was wonderful, although they hated each other they could from time to time come together and for the time feel the delight of hatred as the delight of love; but this came from a hankering of the flesh. What the delight of hatred and thus of doing evil is with those who are in hell can neither be described nor believed. To do evil is the joy of their heart, and this they call their heaven. Their delight in doing evil derives its all from hatred and vengeance against good and truth; when, therefore, they are moved by a deadly 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 being injected flesh, becomes for the moment the delight of adultery,--the soul in which the hatred lies conceal...
Post a Comment
Read more

SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD - { PT. 71 }

Image
  { PT.  71 } - From this, too, comes the pleasure and delight of adultery; but as prolification by adulteries corresponds to the bringing forth of evil through falsity and of falsity from evil, that pleasure or delight decreases and becomes vile by degrees until it is changed at last into aversion and disgust. Because, as has been said above, the delight of the love of marriage is a heavenly 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 an adulterer and an adulteress except such as the love of hatred is, which is such that they can be in conjunction in externals but not in internals there is something fiery, but in the internals there is coldness; therefore...
Post a Comment
Read more