is like the difference
between heaven and hell. That such is the difference between them will
be seen in what follows. This, then, is why in the Word in its
spiritual sense heaven and the church are meant by nuptials and
marriages, and hell and rejection of all things of the church are meant
in the Word in its spiritual sense by adulteries and whoredoms. (A.E.,
n. 981.)

Since adultery is hell in man and marriage is heaven in him, it follows
that so far as a man loves adultery he removes himself from heaven;
consequently adulteries close heaven and open hell, and this they do so
far as they are believed to be allowable and are perceived to be more
delightful than marriages. The man, therefore, who confirms himself in
adulteries and commits them from the favor and consent of his will, and
turns away from marriage, closes heaven to himself, until finally he
ceases to believe anything of the church or of the Word, and becomes a
wholly sensual man, and after death an infernal spirit; for, as has been
said above, adultery is hell, and thus an adulterer is a form of hell.
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 he reasons that marriages and adulteries are alike, but that
marriages must be maintained in kingdoms for the sake of order and 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 this day possess the
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