Apocalypse Explained (Whitehead) n. 992

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992. Because of their distresses and their sores, signifies from loathing and nausea towards genuine truths and goods arising from the evils and falsities in which those are who are in faith alone. This is evident from the signification of "distresses," as being loathing toward genuine truths and goods arising from the falsities in which those are who are in faith alone (see n. 990); also from the signification of "sores," as being nausea arising from evils of the life. That "sores" signify the evil works that are what is man's own [proprium) and consequent falsifications of truth and good, may be seen above (n. 962]. Nausea is signified because pain from the sores on account of which they blasphemed the God of heaven is meant, and yet not pain on that account, but nausea for truths and for the goods therefrom.

(Continuation respecting the Sixth Commandment)

[2] It has been said that the love of adultery is a fire enkindled from impurities that soon burns out and is turned into cold, and into an aversion corresponding to hatred. But the reverse is true of the love of marriage. This is a fire enkindled from the love of good and truth and from the delight in well-doing, thus from love to the Lord and from love towards the neighbor. This fire, which from its origin is heavenly, is full of innumerable delights, as many, in fact, as are the delights and blessednesses of heaven. It has been told me that the charms and pleasantnesses of that love which are manifested from time to time are so many and such that they cannot be numbered or described. Moreover, they are multiplied with continual increase to eternity. These delights have their origin in the fact that the married pair wish to be united into one as to their minds, and into such a union heaven breathes from the marriage of good and truth from the Lord in heaven. [3] I will here say something about the marriages of angels in heaven. They declare that they are in continual potency, that after the acts there is never any weariness, still less any sadness, but eagerness of life and cheerfulness of mind, that the married pair pass the night in each other's bosoms as if they were created into one, that effects are constantly open, that they are never lacking when they have desire, since without these their love would be like the channel of a fountain stopped up. The effect opens that channel and causes continuance and conjunction that they may become as one flesh; for the vital of the husband adds itself to the vital of the wife and binds together. They declare that the delights of the effects cannot be described in the expressions of any language in the natural world, nor be thought of in any except spiritual ideas, and that even these do not exhaust them. These things have been told me by the angels.


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