304. (8) This happens in the case of people who think chastely in regard to marriage, not so in the case of those who think unchastely in regard to it. With chaste people - who are people who think of marriage in accordance with religion - a marriage of the spirit precedes and one of the body follows after. These are also people in whom love ascends toward the soul and thus descends from on high, as described above in no. 302. Their souls turn away from an unrestricted love for the opposite sex and devote themselves to one, looking to an everlasting and eternal union with him or her and the growing blessings of that union, which fuel in them a hope that continually refreshes their minds. [2] It is entirely different with unchaste people, however, who are people who do not think of marriage and its sanctity in accordance with religion. In their case they experience a marriage of the body and not one of the spirit. If during the state of betrothal some trace of a marriage of the spirit appears, still, even if this ascends through an elevation of their thoughts concerning it, it nevertheless falls back into lusts which arise from the flesh in the will of the flesh, thus casting itself headlong from the unchaste elements there into the body and polluting the outmost expressions of its love with a beguiling ardor. So it is that as suddenly as love blazed in the beginning, just as suddenly it burns out and vanishes into the coldness of winter, thus quickening a waning of its ability. The state of betrothal in their case does little more than to incite them to fulfill their lusts with lascivious gratifications and by these contaminate the conjugial relationship of love.