453. VIII. THAT THE LUST OF FORNICATING IS GRIEVOUS SO FAR AS IT LOOKS TO ADULTERY. All those in the lust of fornication look to adultery who do not believe adulteries to be sins and think the same of marriages as of adulteries, with the sole distinction of lawful and unlawful. Such men make one evil out of all evils; they mingle them together, like filth with edible foods in one dish and offscourings with wines in one cup, and then eat and drink. They do the same thing with love of the sex, fornication, pellicacy, the milder, grievous, and more grievous kinds of adultery, yea, and with stupration or defloration. Add to this, that not only do they mingle all these together but they also mingle them with marriages and pollute the latter with the same idea. To such men, who do not even distinguish between the latter and the former, after their customary roamings with the sex, comes cold, loathing and disgust, first for their married partner, then for other women, and finally for the whole sex. It is self-evident that with such men there is no purpose, intention or end looking to what is good or chaste, whereby they may be exculpated; nor any separation of evil from good, or of the unchaste from the chaste, whereby they may be purified, as is the case with those spoken of in the preceding article (no. 452) who from fornication look to conjugial love and prefer it.
It is allowed to confirm the above by this new information from heaven: I have met many who in the world had lived outwardly like others, dressing finely, faring sumptuously, doing business for gain like other men, attending dramatic performances, joking about amatory matters as if from lust, besides other like things; yet in some, the angels condemned these things as evils of sin, and in some they did not account them as evils; and the latter they declared guiltless, and the former guilty. To the question why they did so, when yet the men had done the same things, they answered that they view all men from their purpose, intention or end, and make distinctions accordingly; thus, that those whom the end excuses or condemns, they excuse or condemn, for all in heaven have good as an end, and all in hell have evil as an end; and that this and nothing else is meant by the Lord's words, Judge not that ye be not condemned (Matt. 7:1).
