ugial love, but not by those who are in the love of adultery. The
latter are in obscurity respecting all the derivations of the love of
the sex, whereas the former are enlightened respecting them:
nevertheless, those who are in adultery, can see those derivations and
their distinctions, not indeed in and from themselves, but from others
when they hear them: for an adulterer has a similar faculty with a
chaste husband of elevating his understanding; but an adulterer, after
he has acknowledged the distinctions which he has heard from others,
nevertheless forgets them, when he immerses his understanding in his
filthy pleasure; for the chaste and the unchaste principles, and the
sane and the insane, cannot dwell together; but, when separated, they
may be distinguished by the understanding. I once inquired of those in
the spiritual world who did not regard adulteries as sins, whether they
knew a single distinction between fornication, keeping a mistress, the
two kinds of concubinage, and the several degrees of adultery? They said
they were all alike. I then asked them whether marriage was
distinguishable? Upon this they looked around to see whether any of the
clergy were present, and as there were not, they said, that in itself it
is like the rest. The case was otherwise with those who in the ideas of
their thought regarded adulteries as sins: these said, that in their
interior ideas, which are of the perception, they saw distinctions, but
had not yet studied to discern and know them asunder. This I can assert
as a fact, that those distinctions are perceived by the angels in heaven
as to their minutiae. In order therefore that it may be seen, that there
are two kinds of concubinage opposite to each other, one whereby
conjugial love is destroyed, the other whereby it is not, we will first
describe the kind which is condemnatory, and afterwards that which is
not.

464. II. CONCUBINAGE CONJOINTLY WITH A WIFE IS ALTOGETHER UNLAWFUL FOR
CHRISTIANS, AND DETESTABLE. It is unlawful, because it is contrary to
the conjugial covenant; and it is detestable, because it is contrary to
religion; and what is contrary to religion, and at the same time to the
conjugial covenant, is contrary to the Lord: wherefore, as soon as any
one, without a really conscientious cause, adjoins a concubine to a
wife, heaven is closed to him; and by the angels he is no longer
numbered among Christians. From that time also he despises the things of
the church