1. The Lord is the source of conjugial love, which is the marriage of good and truth with a married couple.
2. It is the eternal conjunction between one wife and one husband who have regenerated together.
3. It is the greatest cause of happiness with angels and the regenerate on earth.
4. It is the result of the husband and wife sharing their thoughts, their feelings and their lives out of love for each other. In particular, it is the result of the husband sharing the truths of his own rational wisdom and the wife sharing the goods of her own love for marriage, also called conjugial love.
5. In conjugial love the souls of a married couple are united, their minds or spirits are conjoined, and their spiritual bodies come together occasionally in the full embrace of love.
6. To obtain this love a married couple must go to the Word as the only source of goods and truths, they must pray for conjugial love, and they must shun wandering lusts.
7. A married couple may have conjugial love on earth, if they regenerate.
8. This love is in perfect order, and so it is celestial, spiritual, holy, pure and clean, more so than any other human love.
9. The spheres of heaven (innocence, peace and joy) permeate conjugial love, for this love is heaven with a married couple.
10. There are three kinds of marriage:
- Conjugial love or ideal marriage exists in heaven, and is spiritual.
- Perverted or un-ideal marriage love exists in hell, and is merely natural or sensual.
- Natural marriage love or non-ideal marriage exists in the world of spirits and is natural.
A married couple on earth may have any of these three types of love.
11. All marriages on earth begin with a mixture of non-ideal and ideal love, and can become more ideal by means of regeneration, or less ideal by means of degeneration.
12. The hells want to destroy conjugial love with a couple.
13. The hells can destroy this love by means of evils or by means of ignorance.
14. The most common method used to destroy a marriage is to cause irritation due to important differences, for this can lead to coldness in marriage, and then to separation, and finally to divorce.
15. The hells particularly strive to stir up those evils which oppose conjugial love, especially the lust of adultery in various, hideous forms.
