y joys, in their order and in
their degrees, have their origins and their causes in marriage love.

From the felicities of marriages a conclusion may be drawn respecting
the infelicities of adulteries, namely, that the love of adultery is the
fundamental love of all infernal loves, which are in themselves not
loves, but hatreds, consequently from the love of adultery hatreds of
every kind gush forth, both against God and against the neighbor, and in
general against every good and truth of heaven and the church; therefore
to it all infelicities belong, for, as has been said before, from
adulteries man becomes a form of hell, and from the love of adulteries
he becomes an image of the devil. That from the marriages in which
there is true marriage love all delights and felicities increase even
till they become the delights and felicities of the inmost heaven, and
that all that is undelightful and unhappy in the marriages in which love
of adultery reigns increases in direfulness even to the lowest hell, can
be seen in the work on Heaven and Hell (n. 386). (A.E., n. 993.)

True marriage love is from the Lord alone. It is from the Lord alone
because it descends from the Lord's love for heaven and the church, and
thus from the love of good and truth; for good is from the Lord, and
truth is in heaven and the church; and from this it follows that true
marriage love in its first essence is love to the Lord. And from this
it is that no one can be in true marriage love and in its
pleasantnesses, delights, blessings, and joys, unless he acknowledges
the Lord alone, that is, that the trinity is in Him. One who approaches
the Father as a person by Himself, or the Holy Spirit as a person by
Himself, and not these as in the Lord, can have no marriage love.

The genuine conjugal principle is given especially in the third heaven,
because the angels there are in love to the Lord and acknowledge Him
alone as God, and do His commandments. To them doing the commandments
is loving the Lord. To them the Lord's commandments are the truths in
which they receive Him. There is conjunction of the Lord with them, and
of them with the Lord; for they are in the Lord because they are in
good, and the Lord is in them because they are in truths. This is the
heavenly marriage, from which true marriage love descends. (A.E., n.
995.)

As true marriage love in its first essence is love to the Lord from the
Lord it is also innocence. Innocence is