479.  I. THERE ARE THREE GENERA OF ADULTERIES,—­SIMPLE, DUPLICATE, AND TRIPLICATE.  The Creator of the universe has distinguished all the things which he has created into genera, and each genus into species, and has distinguished each species, and each distinction in like manner, and so forth, to the end that an image of what is infinite may exist in a perpetual variety of qualities.  Thus the Creator of the universe has distinguished goods and their truths, and in like manner evils and their falses, after they arose.  That he has distinguished all things in the spiritual world into genera, species, and differences, and has collected together into heaven all goods and truths, and into hell all evils and falses, and has arranged the latter in an order diametrically opposite to the former, may appear from what is explained in a work concerning HEAVEN AND HELL, published in London in the year 1758.  That in the natural world he has also thus distinguished and does distinguish goods and truths, and likewise evils and falses, appertaining to men, and thereby men themselves, may be known from their lot after death, in that the good enter into heaven, and the evil into hell.  Now, since all things relating to good, and all things relating to evil, are distinguished into genera, species, and so forth, therefore marriages are distinguished into the same, and so are their opposites, which are adulteries.

480.  II.  SIMPLE ADULTERY IS THAT OF AN UNMARRIED MAN WITH ANOTHER’S WIFE, OR AN UNMARRIED WOMAN WITH ANOTHER’S HUSBAND.  By adultery here and in the following pages we mean the adultery which is opposite to marriage; it is opposite because it violates the covenant of life contracted between married partners:  it rends asunder their love, and defiles it, and closes the union which was begun at the time of betrothing, and strengthened in the beginning of marriage:  for the conjugial love of one man with one wife, after engagement and covenant, unites their souls.  Adultery does not dissolve this union, because it cannot be dissolved; but it closes it, as he that stops up a fountain at its source, and thence obstructs its stream, and fills the cistern with filthy and stinking waters:  in like manner conjugial love, the origin of which is a union of souls, is daubed with mud and covered by adultery; and when it is so daubed with mud there arises from beneath the love of adultery; and as this love increases, it becomes fleshly, and rises in insurrection against conjugial love, and destroys it.  Hence comes the opposition of adultery and marriage.

481.  That it may be further known how gross is the stupidity of this age, in that those who have the reputation of wisdom do not see any sin in adultery, as was discovered by the angels (see just above, n. 478), I will here add the following MEMORABLE RELATION.  There were certain spirits who, from a habit they had acquired in the life of the body, infested me with peculiar cunning, and this they did by a sottish