491.  XI.  THE ADULTERIES COMMITTED BY SUCH PERSONS ARE GRIEVOUS, AND ARE IMPUTED TO THEM ACCORDING TO CONFIRMATIONS.  It is the understanding alone that confirms, and when it confirms, it engages the will to its party, and sets it about itself, and thus compels it to compliance.  Confirmations are affected by reasonings, which the mind seizes for its use, deriving them either from its superior region or from its inferior; if from the superior region, which communicates with heaven, it confirms marriages and condemns adulteries; but if from the inferior region, which communicates with the world, it confirms adulteries and makes light of marriages.  Every one can confirm evil just as well as good; in like manner what is false and what is true; and the confirmation of evil is perceived with more delight than the confirmation of good, and the confirmation of what is false appears with greater lucidity than the confirmation of what is true.  The reason of this is, because the confirmation of what is evil and false derives its reasonings from the delights, the pleasures, the appearances, and the fallacies of the bodily senses; whereas the confirmation of what is good and true derives its reasons from the region above the sensual principles of the body.  Now, since evils and falses can be confirmed just as well as goods and truths, and since the confirming understanding draws the will to its party, and the will together with the understanding forms the mind, it follows that the form of the human mind is according to confirmations, being turned to heaven if its confirmations are in favor of marriage, but to hell if they are in favor of adulteries; and such as the form of a man’s mind is such is his spirit; consequently such is the man.  From these considerations then it is evident, that adulteries of this degree after death are imputed according to confirmations.

492.  XII.  THE ADULTERIES OF THE FOURTH DEGREE ARE ADULTERIES OF THE WILL WHICH ARE COMMITTED BY THOSE WHO MAKE THEM LAWFUL AND PLEASING, AND WHO DO NOT THINK THEM OF IMPORTANCE ENOUGH TO CONSULT THE UNDERSTANDING RESPECTING THEM.  These adulteries are distinguished from the foregoing from their origins.  The origin of these adulteries is from the depraved will connate to man, or from hereditary evil, which a man blindly obeys after he is capable of exercising his own judgement, not at all considering whether they are evils or not; wherefore it is said, that he does not think them of importance enough to consult the understanding respecting them:  but the origin of the adulteries which are called adulteries of reason, is from a perverse understanding; and these adulteries are committed by those who confirm themselves in the persuasion that they are not evils of sin.  With the latter adulterers, the understanding is the principal agent; with the former the will.  The distinctions in these two cases do not appear to any man in the natural world; but they appear plainly to the angels