and becomes its nature. If the love of the parents is a love of adultery
it is also a love of evil for falsity and of falsity for evil. From
this source man has all evil, and from evil he has hell. All this makes
clear that it is from adulteries that man has hell, until he is reformed
by the Lord by means of truths and a life according to them. And no one
can be reformed unless he shuns adulteries as infernal and loves
marriages as heavenly. In this and in no other way is hereditary evil
broken and rendered milder in the offspring.

It is to be noted, however, that while from adulterous parents man is
born a hell, he is not born for hell but for heaven. For the Lord
provides that no one shall be condemned to hell on account of hereditary
evils, but only on account of the evils that the man has actually made
his own by his life, as can be seen from the lot of infants after death,
all of whom are adopted by the Lord, educated under His auspices in
heaven, and saved. This makes clear that every man, although from the
evils with which he is born he is a hell, is born not for hell but for
heaven.

It is the same with every man born from adultery if he does not himself
become an adulterer. Becoming an adulterer means living in the marriage
of evil and falsity by thinking evils and falsities from a delight in
them and by doing them from a love for them. Every man who does this
becomes an adulterer. Moreover, it is from Divine justice that no one
suffers punishments on account of the evils of his parents, but only on
account of his own; therefore the Lord provides that hereditary evils
shall not return after death, but only one's own evils, and it is only
for those that return that a man is then punished. (A.E., n. 989.)

It has been said that the difference between a love of marriage and a