The reason why the joys of scortatory love start from the flesh is that the stimulation of the flesh is their beginning. The reason why they infect the spirit, and are fleshly even in the spirit, is that it is not the flesh, but the spirit which feels what happens in the flesh. It is much the same with this feeling as with the other senses; for instance, it is not the eye, but the spirit, which sees and distinguishes differences in the objects before it; and it is not the ear, but the spirit, which hears and distinguishes the sequences of harmonies in singing and the matches in the articulate sounds of speech. How the spirit feels everything depends upon how far it is raised. A spirit which is not raised above the level of the bodily senses but is enmeshed in them, is unable to feel pleasures other than those which come in from the flesh and from the world through the bodily senses; it seizes on these and is delighted by them, and it makes them its own.

[2] Now since the beginnings of scortatory love are the stimuli and itching of the flesh, it is plain that these become in the spirit filthy enticements, which excite and inflame lust as they rise up and sink down, so acting on each other. In general, the lusts of the flesh regarded in themselves are nothing but lusts for evil and falsity all rolled into one. Hence there has arisen the truth known in the church, that the flesh lusts against the spirit,* that is, against the spiritual man. It therefore follows that the pleasures of the flesh in respect of the pleasures of scortatory love are nothing but the bubbling up of lusts, which in the spirit become fountains of immodesty. * Gal. 5:17.