3197. Next I saw also by a clear spiritual mental image how love not marital, or the persuasion that the marriage debt is of no account, even to the point that they place their highest enjoyment and freedom in things contrary to it, of whom there are very many in Christendom, not so many among the gentiles of the globe-by a spiritual mental image I saw how, by that enjoyment and persuasive freedom, they more and more remove themselves from heaven, or happiness. Indeed, as I saw clearly in the other life, they even attain finally to the most dreadful hellish qualities, so that nothing human remains, but everything deadly, which cannot at all be described on account of the horror. One spirit, who was in the spiritual mental picture with me, was running forward at face level to a great distance, where those spirits were. He was shouting that he would show them what their love turns into, thus holding a mental image: it first struck them as most pleasant, but when he came little by little farther forwards, the image continued according to their progression toward hell, and finally ended in such a horror that they could [stand it] no longer, for they were seeing the most dreadful hell before their eyes. From this it can be seen what the marriage debt is. 1748, 19 Sept.