70. Conjugial love comes down from the marriage of good and truth

It became known to me from long experience that no one has conjugial love unless he is in the love of truth from good, and in the love of good by means of truth, that is, in the heavenly marriage; and that he cannot be in any mutual love of good and truth unless he shuns adultery and loathes it like hell. This holds even for those who have lived in marriage in the world and have loved their wife for the sake of cohabitation, the pleasure of life on earth for the sake of children. For celestial things ought to flow into conjugial love, and man comes into his celestial and spiritual things after death, and then becomes completely as he was formerly in that respect; it cannot be otherwise.

1260. Since 'nations' in the Most Ancient Church and in the Ancient Church meant goods or good persons, therefore also in the contrary sense they mean evils or evil persons Similarly with 'peoples'; since these meant truths, therefore also in the contrary sense they mean falsities. For in a corrupted Church good is turned into evil, and truth into falsity, as a consequence of which the meaning of nations and peoples in that contrary sense occurs many times in the Word, as in Isaiah 13:4; 14:6; 18:2, 7; 30:28; 34:1-2; Ezekiel 20:13; and in many other places.