the flesh is contrary to the spirit, that is, contrary to
the spiritual things of the church: hence also the delights of
adulterous love are called the pleasures of insanity. If you desire
demonstration in this case, go, I pray, to those whom you know to be
such adulterers, and ask them privately, what they think concerning God,
the church, and eternal life, and you will hear. The genuine reason is,
because as conjugial love opens the interiors of the mind; and thereby
elevates them above the sensual principles of the body, even into the
light and heat of heaven, so, on the other hand, the love of adultery
closes the interiors of the mind, and thrusts down the mind itself, as
to its will, into the body, even into all things which its flesh lusts
after; and the deeper it is so thrust down, the further it is removed
and set at a distance from heaven.

498. XVII. NEVERTHELESS THEY HAVE THE POWERS OF HUMAN RATIONALITY LIKE
OTHER MEN. That the natural man, the sensual, and the corporeal, is
equally rational, in regard to understanding, as the spiritual man, has
been proved to me from satans and devils arising by leave out of hell,
and conversing with angelic spirits in the world of spirits; concerning
whom, see the MEMORABLE RELATIONS throughout; but as the love of the
will makes the man, and this love draws the understanding into consent,
therefore such are not rational except in a state removed from the love
of the will; when they return again into this love, they are more
dreadfully insane than wild beasts. But a man, without the faculty of
elevating the understanding above the love of the will, would not be a
man but a beast; for a beast does not enjoy that faculty; consequently
neither would he be able to choose any thing, and from choice to do what
is good and expedient, and thus he would not be in a capacity to be
reformed, and to be led to heaven, and to live for ever. Hence it is,
that determined and confirmed adulterers, although they are merely
natural, sensual, and corporeal, still enjoy, like other men, the powers
of understanding or rationality: but when they are in the lust of
adultery, and think and speak from that lust concerning it, they do not
enjoy that rationality; because then the flesh acts on the spirit, and
not the spirit on the flesh. It is however to be observed, that these at
length after death become stupid; not that the faculty of growing wise
is taken away from them, but that they are unwilling