all
things relating to good, and all things relating to evil, are
distinguished into genera, species, and so forth, therefore marriages
are distinguished into the same, and so are their opposites, which are
adulteries.

480. II. SIMPLE ADULTERY IS THAT OF AN UNMARRIED MAN WITH ANOTHER'S
WIFE, OR AN UNMARRIED WOMAN WITH ANOTHER'S HUSBAND. By adultery here and
in the following pages we mean the adultery which is opposite to
marriage; it is opposite because it violates the covenant of life
contracted between married partners: it rends asunder their love, and
defiles it, and closes the union which was begun at the time of
betrothing, and strengthened in the beginning of marriage: for the
conjugial love of one man with one wife, after engagement and covenant,
unites their souls. Adultery does not dissolve this union, because it
cannot be dissolved; but it closes it, as he that stops up a fountain at
its source, and thence obstructs its stream, and fills the cistern with
filthy and stinking waters: in like manner conjugial love, the origin of
which is a union of souls, is daubed with mud and covered by adultery;
and when it is so daubed with mud there arises from beneath the love of
adultery; and as this love increases, it becomes fleshly, and rises in
insurrection against conjugial love, and destroys it. Hence comes the
opposition of adultery and marriage.

481. That it may be further known how gross is the stupidity of this
age, in that those who have the reputation of wisdom do not see any sin
in adultery, as was discovered by the angels (see just above, n. 478), I
will here add the following MEMORABLE RELATION. There were certain
spirits who, from a habit they had acquired in the life of the body,
infested me with peculiar cunning, and this they did by a sottish and as
it were waving influx, such as is usual with well-disposed spirits; but
I perceived that they employed craftiness and similar means, to the
intent that they might engage attention and deceive. At length I entered
into conversation with one of them who, it was told me, had while he
lived in the world been the general of an army: and as I perceived that
in the ideas of his thought there was a lascivious principle, I
conversed with him by representatives in the spiritual language which
fully expresses what is intended to be said, and even several things in
a moment. He said that, in the life of the body in the former world, he
had made no account of adulteri