432. 8. Licentious love makes a person less and less human and less and less a man, while conjugial love makes a person more and more human and more and more a man. That conjugial love makes a person human is shown and attested by each and every point that we demonstrated to the light of reason in Part One, concerning love and the delights of its wisdom. As, for example:
1. That a person who is in a state of truly conjugial love becomes more and more spiritual, and the more spiritual anyone is, the more human he is.
2. That he becomes more and more wise, and the wiser anyone is, the more human he is.
3. That in him the interior faculties of the mind are opened more and more, to the point that he sees or intuitively acknowledges the Lord, and the more anyone possesses that sight or acknowledgment, the more human he is.
4. That he becomes more and more moral and law-abiding, because his morality and citizenship contain a spiritual soul, and the more morally law-abiding anyone is, the more human he is.
5. That after death he also becomes an angel of heaven, and an angel in essence and form is human; and moreover a genuine humanity radiates from his face, speech and habits; from which it follows as well that conjugial love makes a person more and more human.
[2] That the reverse is the case with adulterers clearly follows from the fundamental opposition of adultery to marriage, which is and has been the subject of this chapter. Namely, from the following:
1. That they are not spiritual but supremely natural; and the natural self separated from the spiritual self is human merely in respect to the intellect, but not in respect to the will. The natural self immerses the will in the body and lusts of the flesh, and at such times the intellect also accompanies it. That such a person is only half human, he himself can see from the reason of his own intellect, if he elevates it.
2. That adulterers are not wise except in their speech and in the way they also conduct themselves when in company with people prominent in status, with people renowned for their learning, or with people who are moral; but that alone among themselves they are insane, regarding the Divine and holy things of the church as meaningless, and defiling the moralities of life with shameless and unchaste depravities, as we will show in the chapter on adultery. 1 Who does not see that such impostors are human only in respect to their external figure, and that in respect to their internal form they are not human?
3. In my case, that I have personally observed that adulterers become less and less human from seeing them in hell, which has served me as clear confirmation of the fact. For in hell they are demons, and when seen in the light of heaven, their faces are as though full of pustules, their bodies as though hunchbacked, their speech rough, and their gestures theatrical.
[3] It should be known, however, that it is purposeful and deliberate adulterers who are of such a character, and not unthinking adulterers. For there are four kinds of adulterers (as discussed in the chapter on adultery and its degrees 2 ): purposeful adulterers, who are prompted by a lust of the will; deliberate adulterers, who prompted by a persuasion of the intellect; cognizant adulterers, who are prompted by enticements of the senses; and unthinking adulterers, who do not possess the ability or freedom to consult the intellect. It is the first two kinds of adulterers who become less and less human. But the second two kinds become human as they retreat from those errors and afterwards become wise.
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