Conjugial Love (Acton) n. 69

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69. I know that few will acknowledge that all joys and delights from the first to the last are gathered into conjugial love, because, as explained and confirmed above (nos. 58, 59), the love truly conjugial into which they are gathered is at this day so rare that it is not known what it is and scarcely that it is, and these joys and delights are present in no other conjugial love than that which is genuine. And since this is so rare on earth, it is impossible to describe its supereminent felicities from any other source than the mouth of angels, for they are in it. These have said that its inmost delights, which are those of the soul - and it is into the soul that the conjugial of love and wisdom or good and truth from the Lord first flows--are imperceptible and hence ineffable, being delights of peace and at the same time of innocence; that in their descent they become more and more perceptible - [2] in the higher regions of the mind as beatitudes, in the lower as happiness, and in the bosom, as delights therefrom; and that from the bosom, they pour themselves into each and every part of the body, and finally, uniting in ultimates, into the delight of delights. Moreover, angels have related wonders concerning them, saying that their varieties in the souls of married partners, and from these in their minds, and from these in their bosoms, are infinite in number and are also eternal; and that they are exalted according to the wisdom with the husbands, and this because the husbands live to eternity in the flower of their age, and nothing is more blessed to them than to grow ever more wise. But more concerning these delights as told by the mouth of angels, may be seen in the Memorable Relations, especially in those which follow after some of the later chapters.


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