ing of the faith of church.{1} That all who are
in hell are antagonistic to marriage love I have been permitted to
perceive from the sphere exhaling from hell, which was like an
unceasing endeavor to dissolve and violate marriages; which shows
that the reigning delight in hell is the delight of adultery, and the
delight of adultery is a delight in destroying the conjunction of
good and truth, which conjunction makes heaven. From this it follows
that the delight of adultery is an infernal delight directly opposed
to the delight of marriage, which is a heavenly delight.

{Footnote 1} Adulteries are profane (n. 9961, 10174). Heaven
is closed to adulterers (n. 2750). Those that have experienced
delight in adulteries cannot come into heaven (n. 539, 2733,
2747-2749, 2751, 10175). Adulterers are unmerciful and
destitute of religion (n. 824, 2747, 2748). The ideas of
adulterers are filthy (n. 2747, 2748). In the other life they
love filth and are in filthy hells (n. 2755, 5394, 5722). In
the Word adulteries signify adulterations of good, and
whoredoms perversions of truth (n. 2466, 2729, 3399, 4865,
8904, 10648).

385. There were certain spirits who, from a practice acquired in the
life of the body, infested me with peculiar craftiness, and this by a
very gentle wave-like influx like the usual influx of well disposed
spirits; but I perceived that there was craftiness and other like
evils in them prompting them to ensnare and deceive. Finally, I
talked with one of them who, I was told, had been when he lived in
the world the leader of an army; and perceiving that there was a
lustfulness in the ideas of his thought I talked with him about
marriage, using spiritual speech with representatives, which fully
expresses all that is meant and many things in a moment. He said that
in the life of the body he had regarded adulteries as of no account.
But I was permitted to tell him that adulteries are heinous, although
to those like himself they do not appear to be such, and even appear
permissible, on account of their seductive and enticing delights.
That they are heinous he might know from the fact that marriages are
the seminaries of the human race, and thus also the seminaries of the
heavenly kingdom; consequently they must on no account be violated,
but must be esteemed holy. This he might know from the fact, which he
ought to know because of his being in the other life and in a state
of perception, that mar