ON MARRIAGE II

On the representation of conjugial love by the most beautiful objects.

Truly conjugial love is represented in heaven by various means. It is represented by diamond auras, glistening as if with rubies and garnets, also by the most beautiful rainbows and showers of gold, the sight of which fills by-standers with such pleasure and delight that their minds are stirred to their depths. I have heard the angels in the gardens of heaven when conjugial love was so represented, and they said that they were filled with such delight that they could not express it otherwise than by saying it was delight itself, from which all other delights sprang as from their origin. They said that this was pure mental delight, without any arousing of lust. For such is conjugial love in origin.

5. Truly conjugial love is chastity itself

Celibacy in the heavens is not called chastity, nor is a young girl described as chaste, nor an unmarried woman, nor a virgin. But chaste is applied to a wife who loathes adultery. In the same way a husband who loathes adultery. For in heaven truly conjugial love is what is called chastity.

9. On those whose aim in marriage is lasciviousness such as exists in adultery

I saw some women in a sort of kitchen, which contained a dark chimney without a fire in the hearth, with butcher's knives in their hands, with which they seemed to want to murder babies. They were deceitful, sly and malicious, all prostitutes, secretly alluring men from all sides. When they were inspected by angels they appeared like two globes full of intestines; one was foully bloody, the other was an ugly yellow. This was the representation of their lusts when inspected by angels. They were all the sort of women who enter into matrimony only for the sake of committing adultery with others, because then they are not afraid of losing their reputations by having an illegitimate child, which they attribute to the husband. Their lot is very hard; everything there is filthy; they live in caves, and are afraid of being seen on account of their ugliness and deformity; nor can they any longer entice any adulterer, because they are ugly and have a fetid stench. Men, however, whose aim in marriage was adultery, and who subsequently lived with adulteresses, form such a distaste for their wives that they run away from them. They eventually become impotent and their thought and speech become lifeless in the company of wives, and each one especially in the company of his own wife.