hell.  If, then, they but hear adulteries mentioned they turn away.  And this is why heaven is closed up to man when he commits adultery from delight; and when heaven is closed man no longer acknowledges the Divine nor any thing of the faith of church.{1} That all who are in hell are antagonistic to marriage love I have been permitted to perceive from the sphere exhaling from hell, which was like an unceasing endeavor to dissolve and violate marriages; which shows that the reigning delight in hell is the delight of adultery, and the delight of adultery is a delight in destroying the conjunction of good and truth, which conjunction makes heaven.  From this it follows that the delight of adultery is an infernal delight directly opposed to the delight of marriage, which is a heavenly delight.

{Footnote 1} Adulteries are profane (n. 9961, 10174).  Heaven is closed to adulterers (n. 2750).  Those that have experienced delight in adulteries cannot come into heaven (n. 539, 2733, 2747-2749, 2751, 10175).  Adulterers are unmerciful and destitute of religion (n. 824, 2747, 2748).  The ideas of adulterers are filthy (n. 2747, 2748).  In the other life they love filth and are in filthy hells (n. 2755, 5394, 5722).  In the Word adulteries signify adulterations of good, and whoredoms perversions of truth (n. 2466, 2729, 3399, 4865, 8904, 10648).

385.  There were certain spirits who, from a practice acquired in the life of the body, infested me with peculiar craftiness, and this by a very gentle wave-like influx like the usual influx of well disposed spirits; but I perceived that there was craftiness and other like evils in them prompting them to ensnare and deceive.  Finally, I talked with one of them who, I was told, had been when he lived in the world the leader of an army; and perceiving that there was a lustfulness in the ideas of his thought I talked with him about marriage, using spiritual speech with representatives, which fully expresses all that is meant and many things in a moment.  He said that in the life of the body he had regarded adulteries as of no account.  But I was permitted to tell him that adulteries are heinous, although to those like himself they do not appear to be such, and even appear permissible, on account of their seductive and enticing delights.  That they are heinous he might know from the fact that marriages are the seminaries of the human race, and thus also the seminaries of the heavenly kingdom; consequently they must on no account be violated, but must be esteemed holy.  This he might know from the fact, which he ought to know because of his being in the other life and in a state of perception, that marriage love descends from the Lord through heaven, and from that love, as from a parent, mutual love, which is the foundation of heaven is derived; and again from this, that if adulterers merely draw near to heavenly societies they perceive their own stench and cast themselves down therefrom towards hell.