257. (21) Of these incidental reasons for coldness, a second is the sense that living with one's partner is compelled by covenant and law and not free. This is reason for coldness only in the case of people for whom conjugial love is cold in their inmost parts; and because it arises in addition to their internal coldness, it becomes an added or incidental reason. In such people, love free of marriage, because of its consent and favor, inwardly burns in a state of heat (for the coldness of the one love means the warmth of the other), and if the heat is not felt, still it is there, even in the midst of coldness. If it were not present even then, revival of interest would be impossible. This heat is what creates the sense of compulsion, and the feeling increases in the measure that the other partner views the covenant by right of contract and the law by right of justice as bonds not to be violated. It is different if the bonds are broken on both sides. [2] The contrary is the case with people who have renounced love outside of marriage and think of conjugial love as heavenly and as being heaven; and still more with those who perceive this to be so. In their case the covenant with its stipulations and the law with its requirements are engraved on their hearts, and these become continually more deeply engraved on them. To them the bond of conjugial love is not an obligation established because of the written covenant or by the enacted law, but the very love they feel has these two implanted in it from creation. The covenant and law inherent in the love is the reason for the covenant and law established in the world, not the reverse. Consequently everything connected with that love is felt as free. There is no sense of freedom that is not connected with love. I have heard moreover from angels that the sense of freedom in truly conjugial love is the freest of all, because that love is the greatest of loves.