ated, and thereby of becoming spiritual, and also of attaining to
love truly conjugial; for these things are connected together. Since
those Christians who marry several wives, commit not only natural but
also at the same time spiritual adultery, it follows that the
condemnation of Christian polygamists after death is more grievous than
that of those who commit only natural adultery. Upon inquiring into
their state after death, I received for answer, that heaven is
altogether closed in respect to them; that they appear in hell as lying
in warm water in the recess of a bath, and that they thus appear at a
distance, although they are standing on their feet, and walking, which
is in consequence of their intestine frenzy; and that some of them are
thrown into whirlpools in the borders of the worlds.

340. VII. THE ISRAELITISH NATION WAS PERMITTED TO MARRY SEVERAL WIVES,
BECAUSE THEY HAD NOT THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, AND CONSEQUENTLY LOVE TRULY
CONJUGIAL COULD NOT EXIST WITH THEM. There are some at this day who are
in doubt respecting the institution relative to monogamical marriages,
or those of one man with one wife, and who are distracted by opposite
reasonings on the subject; being led to suppose that because polygamical
marriages were openly permitted in the case of the Israelitish nation
and its kings, and in the case of David and Solomon, they are also in
themselves permissible to Christians; but such persons have no distinct
knowledge respecting the Israelitish nation and the Christian, or
respecting the externals and internals of the church, or respecting the
change of the church from external to internal by the Lord; consequently
they know nothing from interior judgment respecting marriages. In
general it is to be observed, that a man is born natural in order that
he may be made spiritual; and that so long as he remains natural, he is
in the night, and as it were asleep as to spiritual things; and that in
this case he does not even know the difference between the external
natural man and the internal spiritual. That the Christian church was
not with the Israelitish nation, is known from the Word; for they
expected the Messiah, as they still expect him, who was to exalt them
above all other nations and people in the world: if therefore they had
been told, and were still to be told, that the Messiah's kingdom is over
the heavens, and thence over all nations, they would have accounted it
an idle tale; hence they not only d