sh, which presently cools, and sometimes does not leave any trace of
love behind it towards its object; wherefore this effervescing
lasciviousness, if it is not from a purposed or confirmed principle, and
if the person guilty of it repents, detracts but little from conjugial
love. It is otherwise in the case of polygamical adultery: herein there
is a love analogous to conjugial love; for it does not cool and
disperse, or pass off into nothing after being excited, like the
foregoing; but it remains, renews and strengthens itself, and so far
takes away from love to the wife, and in the place thereof induces cold
towards her; for in such case it regards the concubine courtezan as
lovely from a freedom of the will, in that it can retract if it pleases;
which freedom is begotten in the natural man: and because this freedom
is thence grateful, it supports that love; and moreover, with a
concubine the unition with allurements is nearer than with a wife; but
on the other hand it does not regard a wife as lovely, by reason of the
duty of living with her enjoined by the covenant of life, which it then
perceives as far more constrained in consequence of the freedom enjoyed
with another woman. It is plain that love for a wife grows cold, and she
herself grows vile, in the same degree that love for a courtezan grows
warm, and she is held in estimation. In regard to the SECOND
POSITION--that simultaneous concubinage, or concubinage conjoined with a
wife, deprives a man of all faculty and inclination to conjugial life,
which is implanted in Christians from birth, it may be seen from the
following considerations: that so far as love to a wife is changed into
love to a concubine, so far the former love is rent, exhausted, and
emptied, as has been shewn just above: that this is effected by a
closing of the interiors of the natural mind, and an opening of its
inferior principles, may appear from the seat of the inclination with
Christians to love one of the sex, as being in the inmost principles,
and that this seat may be closed, but cannot be destroyed. The reason
why an inclination to love one of the sex, and also a faculty to receive
that love, is implanted in Christians from birth, is, because that love
is from the Lord alone, and is esteemed religious, and in Christendom
the Lord's divine is acknowledged and worshipped, and religion is from
his Word; hence there is a grafting, and also a transplanting thereof,
from generation to genera