ge of the Lord. But the love
of adultery has its beginning in the outmosts of man from an impure
lascivious fire there, and thus, contrary to order, penetrates toward
the interiors, always into the things that are man's own, which are
nothing but evil, and brings these into a form of hell, which is an
image of the devil. Therefore a man who loves adultery and turns away
from marriage is in form a devil.

As the organs of generation in the two sexes correspond to the societies
of the third heaven, and the love of a married pair corresponds to the
love of good and truth, so those organs and that love correspond to the
Word. The reason is that the Word is Divine truth united to Divine good
going forth from the Lord; and this is why the Lord is called "the
Word," also why in every particular of the Word there is a marriage of
good and truth, or a heavenly marriage. That there is such a
correspondence is a mystery not yet known in the world, but it has been
made evident and proved to me by much experience.

From this also it is clear how holy and heavenly marriages are in
themselves, and how profane and diabolical adulteries are. And for this
reason adulterers make no account of Divine truths and thus of the Word,
and if they were to speak from the heart they would even blaspheme the
holy things that are in the Word. This they do when they have become
spirits after death, for every spirit is compelled to speak from the
heart, that his interior thoughts may be revealed. (A.E., n. 985.)

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