marriage of good and truth
from the Lord, and not fully except by a marriage of two minds and two
bodies. From this it is clear why marriages are heavenly and adulteries
infernal; for marriage is an image of heaven, and true marriage love is
an image of the Lord, while adultery is an image of hell, and love of
adultery is an image of the devil. Moreover, marriage love appears in
the spiritual world in form like an angel, and love of adultery in form
like a devil. Reader, treasure this up within you, and after death,
when you are living as a spirit-man, inquire whether this is true, and
you will see. (A.E., n. 984.)

How profane and thus how much to be detested adulteries are can be seen
from the holiness of marriages. All things in the human body, from the
head to the sole of the feet, both interior and exterior, correspond to
the heavens, and in consequence man is a heaven in its least form, and
also angels and spirits are in form perfectly human, for they are forms
of heaven. All the members devoted to generation in both sexes,
especially the womb, correspond to societies of the third or inmost
heaven, and for the reason that true marriage love is derived from the
Lord's love for the church, and from the love of good and truth which is
the love of the angels of the third heaven; therefore marriage love,
which descends therefrom as the love of that heaven, is innocence, which
is the very being (esse) of every good in the heavens. And for this
reason embryos in the womb are in a state of peace, and when they have
been born as infants are in a state of innocence; so, too, is the mother
in relation to them.

As this is the correspondence of the genital organs in the two sexes, it
is evident that by creation they are holy, and therefore they are
devoted solely to chaste and pure marriage love, and are not to be
profaned by the unchaste and impure love of adultery, by which man
converts the heaven in himself into hell; for as the love of marriage
corresponds to the love of the highest heaven, which is love to the Lord
from the Lord, so the love of adultery corresponds to the love of the
lowest hell.

The love of marriage is so holy and heavenly because it has its
beginning in the inmosts of man from the Lord Himself, and it descends
according to order to the outmosts of the body, and thus fills the whole
man with heavenly love and brings him into a form of the Divine love,
which is the form of heaven, and is an ima