EVERYDAY BLESSINGS

  { PT.  61 } - How profane and thus how much to be detested adulteries are can be seen from the holiness of marriages. All things in the human body, from the head to the sole of the feet, both interior and exterior, correspond to the heavens, and in a heaven in its least form, and also angels and spirits are in form perfectly human, for they are forms of heaven. All the members devoted to generations 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 heaven; therefore marriage love, which descends therefrom as the love of that heaven, is innocence, which is the very being ( esse ) of every good in the heavens. And for the reason embryos in the womb are in a state of peace, and when they have been born as infants are in a state of innocence; so, too, is the mother in r...

  { PT.  60 } - 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; they are two in respect to their bodies but one in respect to life; consequently in heaven the married pair are not called two angels but one. All this makes clear that through marriage man becomes a form of love, and thus a form of heaven, which is an image and likeness of God. Man is born into a love of evil and falsity, which love is the love of adultery; and this love cannot be turned about and changed into spiritual love, which is an image of God, and still less into celestial love, which is a likeness of God, except by a marriage of good and truth from the Lord, and not fully except by a marriage of two minds and two bodies. From this it is clear why marriages of are heavenly and adulteries infernal; for marriage is an image ...

  { PT.  59 } - Spiritual love, which is a love for truth, is an image of God; and celestial love, which is a love for for good, is a likeness of God. All 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 love one another, and ardently long to be united that may be one; and for the reason that Divine good and Divine truth go forth from the Lord united, therefore they must be united in an angel of heaven and in a man of the church. Thin union is by no means possible except by a marriage of two minds into one, since, as has been said before, man was created to be an understanding of truth, and thus a truth, and women was created to be an affection for good, and thus a good; therefore in them a conjunction of good and truth is possible. For marriage love which descends from that conjunction is the ver...

{ PT.  58 } - From this it is now evident that true marriage love is from the Lord alone, and exists in those who are in the conjunction of good and truth from the Lord. As this conjunction is reciprocal it is said by the Lord that They are in Him, and He in them ( JOHN  xix. 20). This conjunction or this marriage was thus establish from creation. The man was created to be an understanding of truth, and the woman to be an affection for good; and thus the man to be a truth, and the woman to be a good. When understanding of truth which is in the man makes one with the affection for good which is in the woman, there is a 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 anyone can clearly perceive if he will. A married pair who interiorly...

  { PT.  57 } - 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 the reasons that marriages and adulteries are alike, but the marriages must be maintained in kingdoms of the training of offspring; also that adulteries are not criminal, since children are equally born from them; and they are not harmful to women, since they can endure them, and by them the procreation of the human race is promoted. He does not know that these and other like reasonings in favor of adulteries ascend from the Stygian [ extremely dark ] waters of hell, and that the lustful and bestial nature of man which inheres in him from birth attracts them and sucks them in with delight, as a swine does excrement. That such reasonings, which at minds of most men in the Christian world are diabolical, will be seen, ( A.E., n. 982 ). That mar...