SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE WORD OF GOD - { PT. 57 }

 { 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 marriage is heaven and that adultery is hell cannot be better seen than from considering their origin. The origin of true marriage love is the Lord's love for the church; and this is why the Lord is 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 on particular is a man in whom the church is. From this it is clear that the Lord's conjunction with a man of the church is the very origin of true marriage love; and how that conjunction can be the origin shall be told. The Lord's conjunction with a man of the church is a conjunction of good and truth; good is from the Lord, and truth is a man, and from this is the conjunction that is called the heavenly marriage, and from that marriage true marriage love exists between the married pair that are in such conjunction with the Lord.