ve; the love manifesting itself, yea, existing and
living thereby. It is well known that the delights are exalted in
proportion as the love is exalted, and also in proportion as the
incident affections touch the ruling love more nearly. Now as conjugial
love is the foundation love of all good loves, and as it is inscribed on
all the parts and principles of man, even the most particular, as was
shewn above, it follows that its delights exceed the delights of all
other loves, and also that it gives delight to the other loves,
according to its presence and conjunction with them; for it expands the
inmost principles of the mind, and at the same time the inmost
principles of the body, as the delicious current of its fountain flows
through and opens them. The reason why all delights from first to last
are collected into this love, is on account of the superior excellence
of its use, which is the propagation of the human race, and thence of
the angelic heaven; and as this use was the chief end of creation, it
follows that all the beatitudes, satisfactions, delights,
pleasantnesses, and pleasures, which the Lord the Creator could possibly
confer upon man, are collected into this his love. That delights follow
use, and are also communicated to man according to the love thereof, is
manifest from the delights of the five senses, seeing, hearing,
smelling, taste, and touch: each of these has its delights with
variations according to the specific uses of each; what then must be the
delight annexed to the sense of conjugial love, the use of which
comprehends all other uses?
69. I am aware that few will acknowledge that all joys and delights from
first to last are collected into conjugial love; because love truly
conjugial, into which they are collected, is at this day so rare that
its quality is not known, and scarcely its existence, agreeably to what
was explained and confirmed above, n. 58, 59; for such joys and delights
exist only in genuine conjugial love; and as this is so rare on earth,
it is impossible to describe its super-eminent felicities any otherwise
than from the mouth of angels, because they are principled in it. They
have declared, that the inmost delights of this love, which are delights
of the soul, into which the conjugial principle of love and wisdom, or
of good and truth from the Lord, first flows, are imperceptible and
thence ineffable, because they are the delights of peace and innocence
conjointly; but that i
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