THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE (pt. 76)

THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE
for the
NEW JERUSALEM
FROM THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
Emanuel Swedenborg
— Doctrinal Series —
(pt. 76)
IN PROPORTION AS ANYONE SHUNS
ADULTERIES OF EVERY KIND AS SINS,
IN THE SAME PROPORTION HE LOVES CHASTITY.

No one can know the nature of the chastity of marriage except the man who shuns as a sin the lasciviousness of adultery.

For a man may know that in which he is, but cannot know that in which he is not. 

If from description or from thinking about it a man knows something in which he is not, he nevertheless knows of it merely as of something in the dark, and there remains some doubt about it, so that no one sees anything in the light and free from doubt until he is actually in it. This last therefore is to know, whereas the other is both to know and not to know. The truth is that the lasciviousness of adultery and the chastity of marriage stand toward each other exactly as do hell and heaven, and that the lasciviousness of adultery makes hell in a man, and the chastity of marriage makes heaven. But the chastity of marriage exists solely with the man who shuns as sin the lasciviousness of adultery.

There are various and many causes that make a man moral in the outward form, but unless he is moral in the inward form also, he is nevertheless not moral.

For example: if a man abstains from adulteries and whoredom from the fear of the civil law and its penalties; from the fear of losing his good name and esteem; from the fear of the consequent diseases; from the fear of his wife's tongue in his home, and the consequent inquietude of his life; from the fear of the husband's vengeance, or that of some relative; from poverty, or avarice; from disability caused either by disease, abuse, age, or impotence; nay, if he abstains from such things on account of any natural or moral law, and not at the same time on account of the spiritual law, he nevertheless is inwardly an adulterer and whoremonger, for nonetheless does he believe that such things are not sins.

As toward God, therefore, he in his spirit makes them not unlawful, and so in spirit he commits them, although not in the body in the sight of the world; and therefore after death, when he becomes a spirit, he speaks openly in favor of them. From all this it is evident that an ungodly man is able to shun evils as injurious, but only a Christian can shun them as sins. ( n. 111.)

(LIFE 76)