adulterated and falsified the Word. Although such were not adulterers in
the world, adultery is excited by them; but it is an adultery called
sacerdotal [priestly] adultery, which is distinguishable from other
adulteries. All this makes clear that the origin of adulteries is the
love and consequent conjunction of evil and falsity. (A.E., n. 1007.)

Adulteries are less abhorrent to Christians than to the heathen, and
even to some barbarous nations, for the reason that at present in the
Christian world there is no marriage of good and truth, but a marriage
or evil and falsity. For the religion and doctrine of faith separated
from good works is a religion and doctrine of truth separated from good;
and truth separated from good is not truth, but inwardly regarded is
falsity; and good separated from truth is not good, but inwardly
regarded is evil. Consequently in the Christian religion there is
doctrine of falsity and evil, from which origin a desire and inclination
for adultery from hell flow in; and this is why adulteries are believed
in the Christian world to be allowable, and are practiced without shame.
For, as has been said above, the conjunction of evil and falsity is
spiritual adultery, from which according to correspondence natural
adultery springs. For this reason "adulteries" and "whoredoms" signify
in the Word adulterations of good and falsifications of truth; and for
this reason Babylon is called in the Apocalypse a "harlot," and
Jerusalem is so called in the Word of the Old Testament; and the Jewish
nation was called by the Lord "an adulterous nation," and "from their
father the devil." (A.E., n. 1008.)

He that abstains from adulteries from any other motive than because they
are sins and are against God is still an adulterer; as for instance when
anyone abstains from them from fear of the civil law and its penalties,
from fear of the loss of reputation and thus of honor, from fear of