Apocalypse Explained (Whitehead) n. 993

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

993. And they repented not of their works, signifies that they were unwilling to live according to the Lord's commandments. This is evident from the signification of "repenting," as being to live a different life; also from the signification of "their works," as being evils from falsities. For those who separate faith from works do evils from falsities, in that they say that as works are from man they are not good but are meritorious, and therefore must not be joined with faith, which is spiritual and justifying. For a man can do nothing that is good from a false principle; and where there is no good there is evil. It is otherwise when a man lives according to the Lord's commandments, which are, that evils must be refrained from and goods must be done. Therefore "they repented not of their works" signifies not to be willing to live according to the Lord's commandments.

(Continuation respecting the Sixth Commandment)

[2] That true conjugial love contains in itself so many ineffable delights that can neither be numbered nor described can be seen from the fact that this love is the fundamental love of all celestial and spiritual loves, since through that love man becomes love; for from it each of the marriage pair loves the other as good loves truth and truth loves good, thus representatively as the Lord loves heaven and the church. Such love can exist only through a marriage in which the man is truth and the wife is good. When a man through marriage has become such love he is also in love to the Lord and in love towards the neighbor, and thus in the love of all good and in the love of all truth. For from man as love there must proceed loves of every kind; therefore conjugial love is the fundamental love of all the loves of heaven. And as it is the fundamental love of all the loves of heaven it is also the fundamental of all the delights and joys of heaven, since every delight and joy is of love. From this it follows that heavenly joys, in their order and in their degrees, have their origins and their causes from conjugial love. [3] From the felicities of marriages a conclusion may be drawn respecting the infelicities of adulteries, namely, that the love of adultery is the fundamental love of all infernal loves, which are in themselves not loves, but hatreds; consequently from the love of adultery hatreds of every kind gush forth, both against God and against the neighbor, and in general against every good and truth of heaven and the church; therefore to it all infelicities belong, for, as has been said before, from adulteries man becomes a form of hell, and from the love of adulteries he becomes an image of the devil. That from the marriages in which there is true conjugial love all delight and felicities increase even to the delights and felicities of the inmost heaven, and that all that is undelightful and unhappy in the marriages in which the love of adultery reigns increases in direfulness even to the lowest hell, can be seen in the work on Heaven and Hell (n. 386).


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church