74. IN PROPORTION AS ANY ONE SHUNS ADULTERIES OF EVERY KIND AS SINS, IN THE SAME PROPORTION HE LOVES CHASTITY.
To "commit adultery," as mentioned in the sixth (or as it is usually called, the seventh) commandment, means, in the natural sense, not only to commit whoredom, but also to do obscene things, to speak lascivious things, and to think about filthy things. But in the spiritual sense to "commit adultery" means to adulterate the goods of the Word, and to falsify its truths. In the highest sense to "commit adultery" means to deny the divinity of the Lord, and to profane the Word. These are the "adulteries of every kind." The natural man is able to know from rational light that to "commit adultery" includes in its meaning the doing of things obscene, the speaking of things lascivious, and the thinking of things that are filthy; but he does not know that to commit adultery means also to adulterate the goods of the Word and to falsify its truths, and still less that it means to deny the divinity of the Lord and to profane the Word. Consequently neither does he know that adultery is so great an evil that it may be called diabolism itself, for he who is in natural adultery is also in spiritual adultery, and the converse. That this is so will be shown in a separate little work entitled De Conjugio.* But those who from their faith and their life do not regard adulteries as sins, are in adulteries of every kind at once.
* This projected little work was afterwards expanded by Swedenborg into a large one, and was published by him in Amsterdam in the year 1768, under the (translated) title: The Delights of Wisdom concerning Conjugial Love; after which follow the Pleasures of Insanity concerning Scortatory Love. The original MS outline for the De Conjugio is now preserved in the library of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. It was published in the original Latin at Tubingen by Dr. Jo. Fr. Im. Tafel in the year 1860. [Tr.]