Conjugial Love (Acton) n. 507

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507. I. THAT BY THE LUST OF VARIETIES IS MEANT THE UTTERLY DISSOLUTE LUST OF WHOREDOM. This lust insinuates itself with those who in their youth have loosened the bonds of modesty and have not lacked plenty of harlots, especially if there was no question of wealth to spend on them. They have implanted and enrooted the lust within themselves by inordinate and unlimited whoredoms, by shameless thoughts about love of the female sex, and by confirmations that adulteries are not evil and are by no means sins. In its progression with them, this lust takes such increase that they desire the women of all the world and troops of them and a new one every day. Since this love separates itself from the common love of the sex implanted in every man, and absolutely from the love of one of the sex which is conjugial love, and casts itself into the exteriors of the heart as the delight of a love separate from the above loves and yet derived from them, therefore it is so deeply enrooted in the cuticles, that after the virile powers have become enfeebled, it remains in the touch. Such men make nothing of adulteries, and therefore think of the whole female sex as of a common harlot, and of marriage as of common harlotry. Thus they mix unchastity with chastity, and are insane from the mixture. What is meant by the statement that the lust of varieties is the utterly dissolute lust of whoredom is thus manifest.


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