the earth if the procreations
there were effected by marriages in which a true marriage love reigned;
for then, however many families might descend in succession from one
head of a family, there would spring forth as many images of the
societies of heaven in a like variety.

Families would then be like fruit-bearing trees of various kinds,
forming as many different gardens, each containing its own kind of
fruit, and these gardens taken together would present the form of a
heavenly paradise. This is said in the way of comparison, because
"trees" signify men of the church, "gardens" intelligence, "fruits"
goods of life, and "paradise" heaven. I have been told from heaven that
with the most ancient people, from whom the first church on this globe
was established, which was called by ancient writers the golden age,
there was such a correspondence between families on the earth and
societies in the heavens, because love to the Lord, mutual love,
innocence, peace, wisdom, and chastity in marriages then prevailed; and
it was also told me from heaven that they were then inwardly horrified
at adulteries, as at the abominable things in hell. (A.E., n. 987.)

That heaven is from marriages and hell from adulteries has been shown
above. What this means shall now be told. The hereditary evils into
which man is born are not from Adam's having eaten of the tree of
knowledge, but from the adulteration of good and the falsification of
truth by parents, thus from the marriage of evil and falsity, from which
a love of adultery springs. The ruling love of parents by means of a
germ from it passes over into the offspring and is transcribed upon it
and becomes its nature. If the love of the parents is a love of adultery
it is also a love of evil for falsity and of falsity for evil. From
this source man has all evil, and from evil he has hell. All this makes
clear that it is from adulteries that man has hell, until he is reformed
by the Lord by means of truths and a life according to them. And no one
can be reformed unless he shuns adulteries as infernal and loves
marriages as heavenly. In this and in no other way is hereditary evil
broken and rendered milder in the offspring.

It is to be noted, however, that while from adulterous parents man is
born a hell, he is not born for hell but for heaven. For the Lord
provides that no one shall be condemned to hell on account of hereditary
evils, but only on account of the evils that the ma