3697. CONCERNING ADULTERIES. It was said to those who are on high, inasmuch as they are interior adulterers, that this single consideration demonstrated that adulteries are diabolical, namely, that as marriages are for the sake of the propagation of offspring, thus of terrestrial societies, and thence of celestial, which as they acknowledged, has in it a Divine end, -therefore, whatever destroys or prevents marriages and thus destroys propagation, that is [essentially] diabolical. - 1748, October 25.