There were some spirits who attacked me with especial cunning as the result of their habits while living in the body. They did this by means of a very gentle influence, a kind of undulation, which is the mark of upright spirits. But I could tell that they were full of tricks and such like designed to trap and deceive me. At length I spoke with one of them who, when he lived in the world, had been, as I was told, general of an army.* Since I perceived that there was wantonness in the ideas he was thinking about, I spoke with him in a spiritual idiom with representations, which fully expressed my meaning and much more in an instant. He said that in his bodily life in the former world he had thought nothing of committing adultery.

I was allowed to tell him that adultery is a grave crime, even though it may seem to people of his sort that it is nothing of the kind and in fact allowable, as the result of the pleasure they sought from it and the false belief this induces. I said that this could also be known from the fact that marriages are the seed-bed of the human race, and consequently of the heavenly kingdom, and they are therefore not to be violated, but regarded as sacred; as also from the fact that he ought to be aware, being in the spiritual world and in a condition to perceive it, that conjugial loves comes down from the Lord through heaven, and this love is the source, or so to speak parent, of the mutual love which is the foundation of heaven. And again from the fact that as soon as adulterers come close to heavenly communities they notice that they have a bad smell and consequently throw themselves from there towards hell. At the very least he could be aware that violating marriages is contrary to Divine laws, the civil law of all kingdoms, as well as the true light of reason, and so contrary to international usage, since it is contrary to the order ordained by God and men; and much more besides.

[2] He replied that he had not given such considerations any thought in his earlier life, so he wanted to reason whether this was true. But he was told that truth does not admit of reasoning, since this favours the pleasures of the flesh against those of the spirit, and he did not know what those were like. He ought first to think about what he had been told, since this was true. Or he could apply the principle, well known in the world, that no one ought to do to another what he did not want another to do to him. So if someone had led astray like this his own wife, whom he had loved (as happens at the beginning of every marriage), then when he was furiously angry about it, would he not, speaking in that condition, himself have detested acts of adultery? And then, being an intelligent man, would he not more than others have convinced himself of this, even to the point of condemning such acts to hell? And since he was a general and associated with forthright men in the army, would he not, to avoid the shame of it, have either killed the adulterer or banished the promiscuous woman from his house? * The remainder of this section is copied with slight changes from HEAVEN AND HELL 385. The original note of this experience in SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES 4405 identifies the general as Price Eugene (of Savoy, 1663-1736).