Conjugial Love (Acton) n. 146

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146. It should be known, however, that neither with men nor with angels is conjugial love wholly chaste or pure. There is still something not chaste or not pure which adjoins or subjoins itself; but this something is of a different nature than that from which comes what is unchaste. With those who are in conjugial love, the chaste is above and the non-chaste below, and between the two is interposed, by the Lord, a hinged door, as it were, which is opened by determination, care being taken that it does not stand open, lest the one should pass over into the other and they should commingle; for man's natural is contaminated and surcharged with evils from birth. Not so his spiritual, because its birth is from the Lord, this birth being regeneration, and regeneration is a successive separation from the evils which are related to the native inclinations. That no love with men or angels is entirely pure, or can ever become so, but that the end, purpose, or intention of the will is what is primarily regarded by the Lord, may be seen in no. 71 above; also that therefore, so far as a man is in these and perseveres in them, he is initiated into purity and makes progress towards it.


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