1. Every Religion Is a Way of Life, and Its Life Is the Doing of Good

Everyone with any religion knows and acknowledges that someone who lives right is saved, and that someone who does not live right is damned. For he knows and acknowledges that someone who lives right, thinks right, not only about God, but also about the neighbor; but not so someone who does not live right.

A person’s life is his love, and what a person loves he not only freely does, but also freely thinks. We say therefore that his life is the doing of good, because doing right accompanies his thinking right. If these two do not go together, they do not constitute a person’s life.

But this we will show in the following pages.

74. Insofar as Someone Refrains from Every Form of Adultery as Being a Sin, So Far He Loves Chastity

In the natural sense of the sixth of the Ten Commandments, to commit adultery means not only to behave licentiously, but also to engage in obscene acts, to speak lasciviously, and to entertain filthy thoughts. In the spiritual sense it means to adulterate the Word’s goods and falsify its truths. And in the highest sense to commit adultery means to deny the Lord’s Divinity and profane the Word. These are all forms of adultery.

From rational sight the natural person may know that to commit adultery also means to engage in obscene acts, to speak lasciviously, and to entertain filthy thoughts. But he does not know that to commit adultery means in addition to adulterate the Word’s goods and falsify its truths. And still less does he know that it also means to deny the Lord’s Divinity and profane the Word. Consequently, neither does he know that adultery is so great an evil that it may be called the height of diabolical conduct. For someone engaged in natural adultery is also engaged in spiritual adultery, and the converse. The reality of this will be demonstrated in a separate little publication on marriage.

Still, the kinds of people who are engaged in all these forms of adultery simultaneously are those who do not, in faith or life, regard adultery as a sin.