313. THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT

You are not to commit adultery.

In the natural sense, this commandment forbids not only committing adultery, but also having obscene desires and realising them, and so indulging in lascivious thoughts and talk. It is clear from these words of the Lord that even lusting is committing adultery:

You have heard that it was said by the men of old, You are not to commit adultery. But I say to you, that if anyone looks at another man's wife so as to lust after her, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart, Matthew 5:27-28.

The reason is that when lust is in the will, it becomes like a deed; for the enticement only enters the understanding, but the intention enters the will, and a lustful intention is a deed. More on this subject can be found in my book CONJUGIAL LOVE AND SCORTATORY ¹ LOVE, published at Amsterdam in 1768. This contains sections on the opposition of [scortatory and] conjugial love (Conjugial Love 423-443); fornication (444-460); types degrees of adultery (478-499); the lust for deflowering (501-505); the lust for variety (506-510); the lust for rape (511-512); the lust for seducing the innocent (513-514); the imputation of either love, both scortatory and conjugial (523-531). All these ideas are meant by this commandment in the natural sense.

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501. THE LUST TO DEFLOWER

The lusts described in the following four chapters not only are lusts of adultery, but they are still more grave, since they do not arise except in consequence of adulteries, being embraced after adulteries become tiresome. So, for example, the lust to deflower, which we consider first, which cannot possibly arise in anyone before then. The same is true of the lust for variety, the lust to rape, and the lust to seduce states of innocence, which we consider in the chapters that follow next.

We call these lusts, because the degree and nature of the lust for them determines the degree and nature of one's embracement of them.

With respect to the lust to deflower specifically, in order to impart a clear conviction that it is wicked, its wickedness will be made manifest from the following considerations in turn:

1. What the state of a virgin or untouched woman is before marriage and after marriage.

2. Virginity is the crown of her chastity and a token of conjugial love.

3. Defloration without intention of marriage is the villainous act of a robber.

4. Those who persuade themselves that the lust to deflower is not a sinful evil, after death suffer a grievous fate.

Explanation of these statements now follows.