lungs. She is my heart, and I am her lungs. But since by heart we here understand love, and by lungs wisdom, she is the love of my wisdom and I am the wisdom of her love. Therefore her love from without veils my wisdom, and my wisdom from within is interiorly in her love. Hence there is an appearance of the unity of our souls in our faces. I then asked, If such union exists, can you look at any other woman than your own? He replied, I can; but as my wife is united to my soul, we both look together. . . While I look at the wives of others, I look at them through my own wife whom alone I love."—C. L. n. 75.
"All of us here say that the husband is truth and his wife is good; and that good cannot love any truth but its own, neither can truth in return love any good but its own. If any other were loved, internal marriage which makes the church would perish, and there would be only external marriage to which idolatry and not the church corresponds. Therefore marriage with one wife we call sacredness; but should it have place with more than one among us, we should call it sacrilege."—Ibid. n. 76.As the love of the sex which is external and natural, differs in its nature from conjugial love which is internal and spiritual, so also do their delights differ. The delights of the former are fleeting and transitory like all merely natural delights—becoming less and less delightful, too, the longer they are enjoyed; but those of the latter, like all pure and spiritual delights, are eternal and immortal—becoming more and more delightful the longer they are experienced. And since this love as it exists in heaven, is most innocent, pure and holy—the fountain-head, as it were, of all other angelic loves—so all heavenly satisfactions, joys and delights are gathered
