MARRIED PARTNER, FROM A COVENANT AND CONTRACT, SEEMS FORCED AND NOT
FREE. This cause operates only with those with whom conjugial love in
the inmost principles is cold; and since it unites with internal cold,
it becomes an additional or accidental cause. With such persons,
extra-conjugial love, arising from consent and the favor thereof, is
interiorly in heat; for the cold of the one is the heat of the other;
which, if it is not sensibly felt, is still within, yea, in the midst of
cold; and unless it was thus also within, there would be no reparation.
This heat is what constitutes the force or compulsion, which is
increased in proportion as, by one of the parties, the covenant grounded
in agreement and the contract grounded in what is just, are regarded as
bonds not to be violated; it is otherwise if those bonds are loosed by
each of the parties. The case is reversed with those who have rejected
extra-conjugial love as detestable, and think of conjugial love as of
what is heavenly and heaven; and the more so if they perceive it to be
so: with such that covenant with its articles of agreement, and that
contract with its sanctions, are inscribed on their hearts, and are
continually being inscribed thereon more and more. In this case the bond
of that love is neither secured by a covenant agreed upon, nor by a law
enacted; but both covenant and law are from creation implanted in the
love itself, which influences the parties; from the latter (namely, the
covenant and the law implanted from creation in the love itself) are
derived the former (namely, the covenant and law) in the world, but not
_vice versa_. Hence, whatever relates to that love is felt as free;
neither is there any freedom but what is of love: and I have heard from
the angels, that love truly conjugial is most free, because it is the
love of loves.

258. XXII. OF ACCIDENTAL CAUSES OF COLD THE THIRD IS, AFFIRMATION ON THE
PART OF THE WIFE, AND HER TALKING INCESSANTLY ABOUT LOVE. With the