Ancient Churches Lexicon Entry:
Marriage
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With the people of both the Most Ancient Church and the Ancient Church, conjugial love was the highest form of love. After that, however, it gradually began to disappear (CL 57).
Marriages gave the highest forms of happiness and delight to the people of the Most Ancient Church; to them, conjugial love was like heaven and heavenly happiness (AC 54, AC 162). They knew that the source of this happiness came from the heavenly marriage of the will and understanding (AC 54). A man in the Most Ancient Church had only one wife, the two of them forming one house. This union was the law for marriages. It was modeled after the heavenly marriage of one Lord and one heaven, and inscribed on the internal man of the people of the Most Ancient Church (AC 162). In the Most Ancient Church, marriages were contracted within houses and families. This law of marriage was intended to preserve the genera and species of perception that had been established within the houses, families, and nations of the Most Ancient Church (AC 483).
However, the descendants of the Most Ancient Church, who became external, no longer perceived any happiness in conjugial love, and so obtained pleasure only from having several wives (AC 162). Furthermore, these descendants began to love their children more than their married partners; for even those who are evil are able to love their children, but only those who are good are able to love their married partner (AC 2730).
The laws in the Ancient Church about betrothals and marriages were no different than the laws that existed in the Jewish Church, with the difference that the people of the Ancient Church were aware of the internal meanings of those laws (AC 4449, AC 3103). For example, in ancient times, when people knew what their representative forms of worship meant, it was customary to give a gold nose-jewel and bracelets to the bride. This was done to represent the fact that the conjugial love within the bride comes from the marriage of the Lord’s Divine Good, represented by the nose-jewel, and His Divine Truth, represented by the bracelets (AC 3103).
See also:
Advent of the Lord, Conjugial Love,
Families, Houses, Law,
Posterities, Representatives, Rituals
Passages relating to Marriage and the Ancient Churches:
AC 54; AC 55; AC 162; AC 483; AC 995; AC 1123; AC 1159; AC 1904; AC 2730;
AC 2732; AC 2739; AC 2740; AC 2851; AC 3021; AC 3103; AC 3187; AC 3665;
AC 3703; AC 3875; AC 3915; AC 4449; AC 4835; AC 4871; AC 5194; AC 9206;
AC 10603; AE 988; CL 57; CL 73; CL 75; CL 76; CL 77; CL 78; CL 205; CL
300; CL 433; Coro 37; Coro 44; De Conj 114; De Conj 119; SE 3316; SE 6110;
SEm 4628
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