t with several, who in the world had lived outwardly
like others, wearing rich apparel, feasting daintily, trading like
others with money, borrowed upon interest, frequenting stage
exhibitions, conversing jocosely on love affairs as from wantonness,
besides other similar things: and yet the angels charged those things
upon some as evils of sin, and upon others as not evils, and declared
the latter guiltless, but the former guilty; and on being questioned why
they did so, when the deeds were alike, they replied, that they regard
all from purpose, intention, or end, and distinguish accordingly; and
that on this account they excuse and condemn those whom the end excuses
and condemns, since all in heaven are influenced by a good end, and all
in hell by an evil end; and that this, and nothing else, is meant by the
Lord's words, _Judge not, that ye be not judged_, Matt. vii. I.

454. IX. THE LUST OF FORNICATION IS MORE GRIEVOUS AS IT VERGES TO THE
DESIRE OF VARIETIES AND OF DEFLORATION. The reason of this is, because
these two desires are accessories of adulteries, and thus aggravations
of it: for there are mild adulteries, grievous adulteries, and most
grievous; and each kind is estimated according to its opposition to, and
consequent destruction of, conjugial love. That the desire of varieties
and the desire of defloration, strengthened by being brought into act,
destroy conjugial love, and drown it as it were in the bottom of the
sea, will be seen presently, when those subjects come to be treated of.

455. X. THE SPHERE OF THE LUST OF FORNICATION, SUCH AS IT IS IN THE
BEGINNING, IS A MIDDLE SPHERE BETWEEN THE SPHERE OF ADULTEROUS LOVE AND
THE SPHERE OF CONJUGIAL LOVE, AND MAKES AN EQUILIBRIUM. The two spheres,
of adulterous love and conjugial love, were treated of in the foregoing
chapter, where it was shewn that the sphere of adulterous love ascends
from hell, and the sphere of conjugial love descends from heaven, n.
435; that those two spheres meet each other in each world, but do not
unite, n. 436; that between those two spheres there is an equilibrium,
and that man is in it, n. 437; that a man can turn himself to whichever
sphere he pleases; but that so far as he turns himself to the one, so
far he turns himself from the other, n. 438: for the meaning of spheres,
see n. 434, and the passages there cited. The reason why the sphere of
the lust of fornication is a middle sphere between those two spheres,
and makes an equi