456.  XI.  CARE IS TO BE TAKEN LEST, BY IMMODERATE AND INORDINATE FORNICATIONS, CONJUGIAL LOVE BE DESTROYED. By immoderate and inordinate fornications, whereby conjugial love is destroyed, we mean fornications by which not only the strength is enervated, but also all the delicacies of conjugial love are taken away; for from unbridled indulgence in such fornications, not only weakness and consequent wants, but also impurities and immodesties are occasioned, by reason of which conjugial love cannot be perceived and felt in its purity and chastity, and thus neither in its sweetness and the delights of its prime; not to mention the mischiefs occasioned to both the body and the mind, and also the disavowed allurements, which not only deprive conjugial love of its blessed delights, but also take it away, and change it into cold, and thereby into loathing.  Such fornications are the violent excesses whereby conjugial sports are changed into tragic scenes:  for immoderate and inordinate fornications are like burning flames which, arising out of ultimates, consume the body, parch the fibres, defile the blood, and vitiate the rational principles of the mind; for they burst forth like a fire from the foundation into the house, which consumes the whole.  To prevent these mischiefs is the duty of parents; for a grown up youth, inflamed with lust, cannot as yet from reason impose restraint upon himself.

457.  XII.  INASMUCH AS THE CONJUGIAL PRINCIPLE OF ONE MAN WITH ONE WIFE IS THE JEWEL OF HUMAN LIFE AND THE RESERVOIR OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.  These two points have been demonstrated universally and singularly in the whole preceding part of CONJUGIAL LOVE AND ITS CHASTE DELIGHTS.  The reason why it is the jewel of human life is, because the quality of a man’s life is according to the quality of that love with him; since that love constitutes the inmost of his life; for it is the life of wisdom dwelling with its love, and of love dwelling with its wisdom, and hence it is the life of the delights of each; in a word, a man is a soul living by means of that love:  hence, the conjugial tie of one man with one wife is called the jewel of human life.  This is confirmed from the following articles adduced above:  only with one wife there exists truly conjugial friendship, confidence, and potency, because there is a union of minds, n. 333, 334:  in and from a union with one wife there exist celestial blessednesses, spiritual satisfactions, and thence natural delights, which from the beginning have been provided for those who are in love truly conjugial, n. 335.  That it is the fundamental love of all celestial, spiritual, and derivative natural loves, and that into that love are collected all joys and delights from first to last, n. 65-69:  and that viewed in its origin, it is the sport of wisdom and love, has been fully demonstrated in the CONJUGIAL LOVE AND ITS CHASTE DELIGHTS, which constitutes the first part of this work.