847. After this I talked with the angels about another revelation made in the world by the Lord. 'What is that?' they asked. 'About truly conjugial love and its spiritual delights,' I said. 'Is there anyone,' said the angels, 'who does not know that the delights of conjugial love surpass the delights of all other loves? Can anyone fail to reflect that into one love have been collected all the blessedness, bliss and pleasure that the Lord can ever bestow, because this corresponds to the love of the Lord and the church; and truly conjugial love is a receiver for those delights, being able to receive and feel them to the full?'
I replied that people are unaware of this, because they have not approached the Lord, and therefore have not shunned the longings of the flesh, so as to be able to be regenerated. Truly conjugial love comes solely from the Lord, and is granted to those who are regenerated by Him. These too are those who are received into the Lord's new church meant in Revelation by 'the New Jerusalem'. To this I added that I was doubtful whether people in the world today want to believe that that love is in essence spiritual, and thus derived from religion, because of the notion they have of it as merely physical. Accordingly it is religion that makes it spiritual in the case of spiritual people, natural in the case of natural people, and simply carnal in the case of adulterers.
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