Conjugial Love (Chadwick) n. 493

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493. (xiii) Adultery committed by these persons is an offence of the most serious kind, being imputed to them as intentional evil, and weighing on them as guilt.

These are the most serious type and more so than the previous types, because the will plays the leading part, but in the previous ones the intellect does this; and a person's life is in essence that of his will and only in form that of his intellect. The reason is that the will acts as one with love, and love is the essence of a person's life, and this takes on a form in the intellect by means of such things as agree with it. The intellect therefore regarded in itself is nothing but a form of the will. Since love has to do with the will and wisdom with the intellect, wisdom is therefore nothing but a form of love; and likewise truth is nothing but a form of good.

That which proceeds from the very essence of a person's life, that is to say, from his will or his love, in called in principle his aim. But that which proceeds from the form of his life, that is to say, from his intellect and his thinking, is called his intention. Guilt is in principle attributable to the will; hence we say that each person is by heredity guilty of evil, but the person is responsible for his own evil. This is why acts of adultery of this type, in the fourth degree, are imputed as deliberately intended evils, and they remain lodged in a person in the form of guilt.


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