De Conjugio (Whitehead) n. 9

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9. THOSE WHO HAVE FOR AN END IN MARRIAGES LASCIVIOUSNESS SUCH AS IS OF ADULTERY. There appeared to me as if in a kitchen, wherein was a dark fire-place, without fire on the hearth, [women] with knives in their hands with which they, as it were, wished to slay infants; they were crafty, cunning, and malicious, all harlots, secretly alluring men to themselves from every quarter. These being inspected by the angels, appeared like intestines in pairs of balls, one of which was filthily bloody, the other foully yellow; thus were represented their lusts when they were inspected by angels. All were such women as seek matrimony solely for the sake of adultery with others, because then they do not fear scandal on account of illegitimate offspring, which they attribute to the husband; their lot is most cruel; all things there are filthy; they dwell in caves, and on account of their ugliness and deformity they fear to be seen, nor can they longer allure any adulterer because they are deformed and have a foul smell; men, also, with whom adulteries are the end of matrimony, and afterward have lived with adulteresses, acquire such a nausea for a wife that they fly from them. They become at length impotences, and with them the life of thought and speech perishes in the society of wives, and especially in the society of their own wives.


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