(ML) - Wisdom's Delight in Marriage Love: Followed by Insanity’s Pleasure in Promiscuous Love

ML 426

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426. III. THAT SCORTATORY LOVE IS THE OPPOSITE TO CONJUGIAL LOVE AS THE NATURAL MAN REGARDED IN HIMSELF IS THE OPPOSITE TO THE SPIRITUAL MAN. That the natural man and the spiritual man are so opposed to each other that the one does not Will what the other wills, yea, that they fight against each other, is known in the Church but has not as yet been explained. It shall therefore now be told what distinguishes the spiritual man from the natural and arouses the latter against the former. The natural man is that into which every one is first introduced during his growth to adult age, this introduction being effected by knowledges and cognitions and by the rational things of the understanding; but the spiritual man is that into which he is introduced by the love of performing uses--a love which is also called charity. So far, therefore, as one is in charity, he is spiritual, but so far as he is not, he is natural even though he be perspicacious in genius and wise in judgment. When separated from the spiritual man, the natural man, howsoever he elevates himself into the light of reason, nevertheless abandons himself to lusts and engages in them. This becomes evident from his genius alone, in that he is void of charity, and one who is void of charity is abandoned to every lasciviousness of scortatory love. Therefore, when it is told him that this libidinous love is the opposite to chaste conjugial love, and he is asked to consult his rational lumen, he does indeed consult that lumen, but only in conjunction with the delight of the evil implanted in the natural man by birth. From this he comes to the conclusion that his reason does not see that there is anything against the sweet sensuous allurements of his body; and after confirming himself in these, his reason becomes numb to all the delights predicated of conjugial love. Indeed, as said above, he fights against them and conquers. Then, like a conqueror after the slaughter, he destroys within himself the camp of conjugial love from its outmost borders to its inmost. This the natural man does from his scortatory love. The above is adduced that it may be known whence comes the opposition of these two loves; for, as previously shown in many places, conjugial love, regarded in itself, is a spiritual love, and scortatory love regarded in itself is a natural love.

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