Spiritual Life and the Word of GodSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Spiritual Life and the Word of God
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Spiritual life; Ten commandments; Word of God (Christian theology)
As all the delights that man has in the natural world are turned into
correspondent delights in the spiritual world, so are the delights of
the love of marriage and the delights of the love of adultery. The love
of marriage is represented in the spiritual world as a virgin, whose
beauty is such as to inspire the beholder 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 the spirits are deformed according to the quality of the love
of adultery in them. In a word, the angels of heaven have life in their
faces, in the movements of the body, and in their speech, in the measure
of their marriage love, while the spirits of hell have death in their
faces in the measure of their love of adultery.
In the spiritual world the delights of marriage love are represented to
the sense by odors from fruits and flowers of various kinds, while the
delights of the love of adultery 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 into
such things, since all things pertaining to adultery are spiritual
filth. Therefore from the brothels in the hells stenches pour forth
that excite vomiting. (A.E., n. 986.)
How holy in themselves, that is, from creation, marriages are can be
seen from the fact that they are the nurseries of the human race; and as
the angelic heaven is from the human race they are also the nurseries of
heaven; consequently by marriages not only the earths but also the
heavens are 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 marriages are in themselves, that is, from creation,
and thus how holy they should be esteemed. It is true that the earth
might be filled with inhabitants by fornications and adulteries as well
as by marriages, but not heaven; and for the reason that hell is from
adulteries but heaven from marriages.
Hell is from adulteries because adultery is from the marriage of evil
and falsity, from which hell in the whole complex is called adultery;
while heaven is from marriages 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 is called a love
of adultery, reigns, whether it be within wedlock or apart from it, and
that is called marriage where its love, which is called marriage love,
reigns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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