Adultery here and in the following pages means the promiscuity which is the opposite of marriage. It is the opposite because it violates the compact for life entered into by a married couple, tears their love apart, pollutes it and blocks the union begun at the time of their engagement and confirmed at the beginning of their marriage.* For the conjugial love of a man with one wife after their agreement and compact unites their souls. Adultery does not dissolve this union, since it is indissoluble, but blocks it; as happens when someone stops up a spring and prevents a stream from flowing from it, filling a reservoir with smelly dregs. Likewise adultery smears over and covers up the conjugial love which arises from the union of souls; and when it is smeared over, the love of adultery rises up from below, and as it grows it become a fleshly love, which attacks conjugial love and destroys it. This is the source of the opposition between adultery and marriage. * This assumes that the text here needs to be corrected to read unionem...initiatam, ac...firmatam.