only confirm what a man wills, falsity especially. The understanding is
also blinded by lusts of evil. As long as the will is in these, it moves
the understanding to confirm them, and so far as they are confirmed, the
will cannot be in affections of good, from these see truths, and so be
reformed.

[2] Take, for instance, one who is in the lust of adultery: his will,
which is in the enjoyment of his love, moves his understanding to confirm
it, saying, "What is adultery? Is there any evil in it? Does not the like
occur between husband and wife? Cannot offspring be born of it, too?
Cannot a woman receive more than one without harm? How does anything
spiritual enter into this?" So thinks the understanding which is then the
courtesan of the will. So stupid is it made by debauchery with the will
that it is unable to see that marital love is spiritual and heavenly love
itself, a reflection of the love between the Lord and the church from
which it is derived; is in itself sacred and chastity itself, purity and
innocence; causes men to be forms of love, since partners can love each
other from inmosts and so form themselves into loves; nor can it see that
adultery destroys this form and with it the Lord's image; and what is
abhorrent, that the adulterer mingles his life with that of the husband
in the wife, for a man's life is in the seed.

[3] Because this is profane, hell is called adultery, and heaven on the
other hand is called marriage. Furthermore, the love of adultery
communicates with the lowest hell, but true marital love with the inmost
heaven; the reproductive organs of both sexes also correspond to
societies of the inmost heaven. These things are adduced so that it may
be known how blinded the understanding is when the will is in the lust of
evil, and that no one can be reformed in a state of blindness of the
understanding.