Conjugial Love (Rogers) n. 350

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350. People know that a person is born worse off than an animal. All animals come by birth into various kinds of knowledge corresponding to their life's love. For as soon as they drop from the womb or are hatched from the egg, they see, hear, walk, recognize their proper food, recognize their mother, recognize their friends and enemies, and not long after, distinguish the opposite sex and know how to mate and also rear their young. The human being alone does not come by birth into such knowledge, inasmuch as he does not have any knowledge inborn in him, but only a capacity and inclination for acquiring such things as have to do with knowledge and love. And if he does not acquire them from others, he remains worse off than an animal. (To see that a person is born of such a character in order that he may attribute nothing to himself but to others, and ultimately all wisdom and love of wisdom to God only, and this to the end that he may become an image of God, consult the narrative account in nos. 132-136.) [2] It follows from this that if a person does not know through others of the Lord's coming into the world and the fact that He is God, and has gained only some concepts relating to the religion and laws of his own region, it is not his fault if he thinks of conjugial love as no more than love for the opposite sex and believes that polygamous love is the only conjugial love there is. The Lord leads such people in their ignorance, and by His Divine guidance He providentially averts from an imputation of guilt those who from religion refrain from evils as sins in order that they may be saved. For everyone is born for heaven, and no one for hell; and from the Lord each comes into heaven, and into hell from self.


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