pleasure of producing offspring, which surpasses every other pleasure,
is so great. It surpasses every other because its use, which is the
procreation of the human race, and thus of heaven, surpasses all other
uses.

From this, too, comes the pleasure and delight of adultery; but as
prolification by adulteries corresponds to the bringing forth of evil
through falsity and of falsity from evil, that pleasure or delight
decreases and becomes vile by degrees until it is changed at last into
aversion and disgust. Because, as has been said above, the delight of
the love of marriage is a heavenly delight, so the delight of adultery
is an infernal delight, so the delight of adultery is from a certain
impure fire, which as long as it lasts, counterfeits the delight of the
love of good, but in itself it is the delight of the love of evil, which
is in its essence the delight of hatred against good and truth. And
because this is its origin there is not love between an adulterer and an
adulteress except such as the love of hatred is, which is such that they
can be in conjunction in externals but not in internals. For in the
externals there is something fiery, but in the internals there is
coldness; therefore after a short time the fire is extinguished and
coldness succeeds, either with impotence or a turning away as from
something filthy.

It has been granted me to see that love in its essence, and it was such
that within it was deadly hatred, while without it appeared like a fire
from burning dung and putrid and stinking matters. And as that fire
with its delight burnt out, so by degrees the life of mutual discourse
and intercourse expired, and hatred came forth, manifested first as
contempt, afterward as aversion, then as rejection, and finally as abuse
and contention. And what was wonderful, although they hated each other