What the delight of hatred and thus of doing evil is with those who are in hell can neither be described nor believed.  To do evil is the joy of their heart, and this they call their heaven.  Their delight in doing evil derives its all from hatred and vengeance against good and truth; when, therefore, they are moved by a deadly and devilish hatred they rage against heaven, especially against those who are from heaven and who worship the Lord; for they violently burn to slaughter them, and because they cannot destroy their bodies they desire to destroy their souls.  It is, therefore, the delight of hatred which, becoming a fire in the extremes and being injected into the lusting flesh, becomes for the moment the delight of adultery,—­the soul in which the hatred lies concealed then withdrawing itself.  It is for this reason that hell is called adultery, and also that adulterers are desperately unmerciful, savage, and cruel.  This, then, is the infernal marriage. (A.E., n. 991.)

It has been said that the love of adultery is a fire enkindled from impurities that soon burns out and is turned into cold, and into an aversion corresponding to hatred.  But the reverse is true of the love of marriage.  This is a fire enkindled from a love of good and truth and from a delight in well-doing, thus from love to the Lord and from love toward the neighbor.  This fire, which from its origin is heavenly, is full of innumerable delights, as many, in fact, as are the delights and blessednesses of heaven.  It has been told me that the charms and pleasantnesses of that love, which are manifested from time to time, are so many and such that they cannot be numbered or described.  Moreover, they are multiplied with continued increase to eternity.  These delights have their origin in the fact that the married pair wish to be united into one in respect to their minds, and into such a union heaven breathes from the marriage of good and truth from the Lord in heaven.  (A.E., n. 992.)

That true marriage love contains in itself ineffable delights that can neither be numbered nor described can be seen from the fact that this is the fundamental love of all celestial and spiritual loves, since through that love man becomes love; for from it each of the married pair loves the other as good loves truth and truth loves good, thus representatively as the Lord loves heaven and the church.  Such a love can come forth only through a marriage in which the man is truth and the wife is good.  When a man through marriage has become such a love he is also in love to the Lord and in love toward the neighbor, and thus in a love for all good and in a love for all truth.  For from man as a love loves of every kind must proceed; therefore marriage 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 foundation 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 in marriage love.