"Hence it follows that where religion is not, conjugial love is not possible; and where this is not, there is conjugial cold which is the privation of that love, consequently a privation of the state of the church, or of religion.
"The first of the internal causes of colds, is the rejection of religion by both parties. With those who throw back [or reject] . . the sacred things of the church, no good love is possible. If there is any apparent one from the body, still there is none in the spirit. With such persons goods locate themselves on the outside of evils, and cover them over as cloth shining with gold covers a rotten body. The evils which reside within and are covered over, are in general hatreds, and thence intestine combats against everything spiritual; for all things of the church which they reject, are in themselves spiritual. And because love truly conjugial is the fundamental of all spiritual loves, it is manifest that there is intrinsic hatred of that."—C. L. n. 238, '39, '40.It cannot be denied, therefore, that the legitimate tendency of this new doctrine of marriage, is most wholesome and benign. And this is the strongest possible evidence of its truth. Where in all the literature of Christendom can we find any teaching on the subject of marriage, so exalted and reasonable in itself, so refining and potent in its moral influence, so purifying and elevating in its practical tendency, as that contained in Swedenborg's treatise on Conjugial Love? Yet this is the book which, more than any other from the pen of the same illumined author, has been misrepresented, maligned, ridiculed, condemned and spit upon by the professed followers of Jesus Christ, and even by men claiming to be his ministers! Our sorrowful feeling for
