384. Marriages on earth are the seedbed of the human race and also of the angels of heaven, for as already noted in its own chapter, heaven is from the human race. For this reason, and because they do have a spiritual origin (from the marriage of the good and the true), and because the Lord's divine nature flows especially into this love, these earthly marriages are seen as most holy by heaven's angels. Correspondingly, adultery, as the opposite of marriage love, is seen by them as unholy; for as angels see in marriages a marriage of the good and the true, which is heaven, so in adultery they see a marriage of the false and the evil, which is hell. So if they even hear adultery mentioned, they turn away. This is why heaven is closed to people if they commit adultery because they enjoy it. Once it is closed, the Divine Being is no longer acknowledged, nor is anything of the faith of the church. ¹

I could tell that everyone in hell is opposed to marriage love from the aura that emanated from hell. It was like a ceaseless effort to break up and destroy marriages. This showed that the dominant pleasure in hell is the pleasure of adultery, and that the pleasure of adultery is also the pleasure of destroying the union of the good and the true, the union that makes heaven. It follows from this that the pleasure of adultery is a hellish pleasure, diametrically opposed to the pleasure of marriage, which is a heavenly pleasure.

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