Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Sidor ...
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
MR. WHITE. 1299
without hurt be totally restrained from going forth into fornication ;
wherefore in populous cities public brothels are tolerated." (
b) "Forni
cation is light, so far as it looks to conjugial love and gives that
love the preference; but it becomes grievous, so far as it looks to
adultery; and it looks to adultery, when adultery is not believed to
be a sin, and when marriages and adulteries are looked upon as
alike, the only difference being that the former are permitted , and
the latter prohibited, by law. Fornication, however, becomes still
more grievous when it degenerates into the lust of varieties, and
into the lust of defloration. Care, therefore, must be taken lest by
immoderate and inordinate fornications conjugial love be destroyed."
(c) "With those who for various reasons cannot as yet enter into
marriage, and, from their passion for the sex, cannot moderate their
desires, the conjugial principle is preserved when they limit the vague
love of the sex to one mistress ; wherefore keeping a mistress is
preferable to promiscuous fornication, provided only one mistress
be kept, and she be neither a virgin, nor a married woman ; and
provided this state be kept separate from conjugial love. This state,
however, is kept separate from conjugial love, when marriage is not
promised to the mistress and when no hope of marriage is ever held
out to her." (d) "Nevertheless," says Swedenborg in the end, "it is
preferable that the torch of the love of the sex be first kindled with
a wife."
Such is the doctrine which Swedenborg sets forth in his treatise
on Conjugial Love on the subject of fornication and keeping a
mistress.
Let us now listen to Mr. White’s language on this subject in
1867, "To discuss the subject of Fornication superficially would be
worse than useless ; to discuss it thoroughly is beyond our province ;
I cannot leave the matter without expressly disowning sympathy
with Swedenborg’s treatment of the case. Admitting the mischiefs
of Celibacy to the fullest, I shrink from the remedy of Mistress
keeping, seeing no advantage in it whatever, economical or other
wise. It may be, that in some or many cases early Marriage is in
convenient, but what inconvenience will a Christian set against the
shame of Fornication and the degradation of Woman" (Vol. II,
p. 414).
Mr. White does not advance here a single statement showing
that Swedenborg’s explanation of the "love of the sex" and of "forni
cation" is incorrect; and he refuses to see a distinction between
"promiscuous fornication" and "keeping a mistress ;" he thus shows
by his treatment of this subject that he is one of the "sickly virtuous
and the hypocritically pure," whose censure, he said in 1856
82*
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
