enter the ether with their judgement, and scatter about vain
conjectures like nuts and almonds." After this they turned to us,
saying, "We will give a direct answer to your windy conjectures and
dreams;" and they said, "What has conjugial love in common with religion
and inspiration from God? Is not this love with every one according to
the state of his potency? Is it not the same with those who are out of
the church as with those who are in it, with Gentiles as with
Christians, yea, with the impious as with the pious? Has not every one
the strength of this love either hereditarily, or from bodily health, or
from temperance of life, or from warmth of climate? By medicines also it
may be strengthened and stimulated. Is not the case similar with the
brute creation, especially with birds which unite in pairs? Moreover, is
not this love carnal? and what has a carnal principle in common with the
spiritual state of the church? Does this love, as to its ultimate effect
with a wife, differ at all from love as to its effect with a harlot? Is
not the lust similar, and the delight similar? Wherefore it is injurious
to deduce the origin of conjugial love from the holy things of the
church." On hearing this, we said to them, "You reason from the stimulus
of lasciviousness, and not from conjugial love; you are altogether
ignorant what conjugial love is, because it is cold with you; from what
you have said we are convinced that you are of the age which has its
name from and consists of iron and clay, which do not cohere, according
to the prophecy in Daniel, chap. ii. 43; for you make conjugial love and
adulterous love the same thing; and do these two cohere any more than
iron and clay? You are believed and called wise, and yet you have not
the smallest pretensions to that character." On hearing this, they were
inflamed with rage and made a loud cry, and called the crowd together to
cast us out; but at that instant, by virtue of power given us by the
Lord, we stretched out our hands, and lo! the flying serpents, vipers,
and hydras, and also the dragons from the wilderness, presented
themselves, and entered and filled the city; at which the inhabitants
being terrified fled away. The angel then said to me, "Into this region
new comers from the earth daily enter, and the former inhabitants are by
turns separated and cast down into the gulphs of the west, which appear
at a distance like lakes of fire and brimstone. All in those gulphs are
sp