when they hear them:  for an adulterer has a similar faculty with a chaste husband of elevating his understanding; but an adulterer, after he has acknowledged the distinctions which he has heard from others, nevertheless forgets them, when he immerses his understanding in his filthy pleasure; for the chaste and the unchaste principles, and the sane and the insane, cannot dwell together; but, when separated, they may be distinguished by the understanding.  I once inquired of those in the spiritual world who did not regard adulteries as sins, whether they knew a single distinction between fornication, keeping a mistress, the two kinds of concubinage, and the several degrees of adultery?  They said they were all alike.  I then asked them whether marriage was distinguishable?  Upon this they looked around to see whether any of the clergy were present, and as there were not, they said, that in itself it is like the rest.  The case was otherwise with those who in the ideas of their thought regarded adulteries as sins:  these said, that in their interior ideas, which are of the perception, they saw distinctions, but had not yet studied to discern and know them asunder.  This I can assert as a fact, that those distinctions are perceived by the angels in heaven as to their minutiae.  In order therefore that it may be seen, that there are two kinds of concubinage opposite to each other, one whereby conjugial love is destroyed, the other whereby it is not, we will first describe the kind which is condemnatory, and afterwards that which is not.

464.  II.  CONCUBINAGE CONJOINTLY WITH A WIFE IS ALTOGETHER UNLAWFUL FOR CHRISTIANS, AND DETESTABLE.  It is unlawful, because it is contrary to the conjugial covenant; and it is detestable, because it is contrary to religion; and what is contrary to religion, and at the same time to the conjugial covenant, is contrary to the Lord:  wherefore, as soon as any one, without a really conscientious cause, adjoins a concubine to a wife, heaven is closed to him; and by the angels he is no longer numbered among Christians.  From that time also he despises the things of the church and of religion, and afterwards does not lift his face above nature, but turns himself to her as a deity, who favors his lust, from whose influx his spirit thenceforward receives animation.  The interior cause of this apostasy will be explained in what follows.  That this concubinage is detestable is not seen by the man himself who is guilty of it; because after the closing of heaven he becomes a spiritual insanity:  but a chaste wife has a clear view of it, because she is a conjugial love, and this love nauseates such concubinage; wherefore also many such wives refuse actual connection with their husbands afterwards, as that which would defile their chastity by the contagion of lust adhering to the men from their courtezans.