he has enacted laws, which are
called laws of civil justice, in favor of marriages and against
adulteries. That the truth of this position may appear yet more
manifest, I may relate what I have very often seen in the spiritual
world. When those who in the natural world have been confirmed
adulterers, perceive a sphere of conjugial love flowing down from
heaven, they instantly either flee away into caverns and hide
themselves, or, if they persist obstinately in contrariety to it, they
grow fierce with rage, and become like furies. The reason why they are
so affected is, because all things of the affections, whether delightful
or undelightful, are perceived in that world, and on some occasions as
clearly as an odor is perceived by the sense of smelling; for the
inhabitants of that world have not a material body, which absorbs such
things. The reason why the opposition of adulterous love and conjugial
love is unknown to many in the world, is owing to the delights of the
flesh, which, in the extremes, seem to imitate the delights of conjugial
love; and those who are in delights only, do not know anything
respecting that opposition; and I can venture to say, that should you
assert, that everything has its opposite, and should conclude that
conjugial love also has its opposite, adulterers will reply, that that
love has not an opposite, because adulterous love cannot be
distinguished from it; from which circumstance it is further manifest,
that he that does not know what conjugial love is, does not know what
adulterous love is; and moreover, that from adulterous love it is not
known what conjugial love is, but from conjugial love it is known what
adulterous love is. No one knows good from evil, but evil from good; for
evil is in darkness, whereas good is in light.

426. III. ADULTEROUS LOVE IS OPPOSED TO CONJUGIAL LOVE, AS THE NATURAL
MAN VIEWED IN HIMSELF IS OPPOSED TO THE SPIRITUAL MAN. That the natural
man and the spiritual are opposed to each other, so that the one does
not will what the other wills, yea, that they are at strife together, is
well known in the church; but still it has not heretofore been
explained. We will therefore shew what is the ground of discrimination
between the spiritual man and the natural, and what excites the latter
against the former. The natural man is that into which every one is
first introduced as he grows up, which is effected by sciences and
knowledges, and by rational principles of the un