Conjugial Love (Chadwick) n. 441

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441. However, the joys of conjugial love have nothing in common with the dregs of joys of scortatory love. Everyone has these in his flesh, but they are separated and taken away as his spirit is raised above the level of the bodily senses, and from that vantage point he can see their appearances and fallacies below him. Likewise he then perceives the joys of the flesh, first as merely apparent and fallacious joys, later as lustful and wanton ones which must be shunned, at a later stage still as injurious and harmful to the soul, and finally he feels them to be unpleasant, foul and nauseating. To the extent that he so perceives and feels these joys like this, he is able to perceive the joys of conjugial love as harmless and chaste, and eventually as delightful and blessed. The reason why the joys of conjugial love also become joys of the spirit in the flesh is that once the joys of scortatory love are taken away, as just stated, the spirit no longer encumbered by them enters chastely into the body and fills its bosom with the delights of its own blessedness; and from the bosom it reaches the outermost levels of that love in the body. So the spirit after this acts in full communion with these levels and they with it.


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