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TESTIMONY OF COUNT A. J. VON HÔPKEN. 51
scure, complicated, and problematical. Our intellectual
faculties are so different, as well as our education and
circumstances ; and hence proceeds all the diversity of
opinions prevailing among men, which are never to be
reconciled. I agree with you, Sir, in this, that the
Swedenborgian system is more comprehensible to our
reason, and less complicate than other systems ; and while
it forms virtuous men and citizens, it prevents, at the
same time, all kinds of enthusiasm and superstition, both
of which occasion so many and such cruel vexations, or
ridiculous singularities, in the world : and from the present
state of religion, (more or less everywhere conspicuous,
according to the more or less free form of government,)
I am perfectly convinced that the interpolations which
men have confusedly inserted into religion, have nearly
effected a total corruption or revolution ; and when this is
seen, the Swedenborgian system will become more general,
more agreeable, and more intelligible than at present,
opiniorum commenta delet dies, naturæ judicia con
firmat, says Cicero. The work of GOD is in its com
position simple, and in its duration perpetual ; on the con
trary, the contrivances of man are complicate, and have
no lasting subsistence. Those few truths which we
possess, and perhaps want in this world, are equally
intelligible to the most simple as to the most profound
metaphysician. Tenets and arguments have troubled
mortals more than convinced them ; excited more reli
gious quarrels and wars in Christendom, than they have
made good Christians. The judgment of father Hellen’s
has afforded me great pleasure, and proves him to be a
reasonable man. The late Swedenborg did not, on his
death-bed, recant what he has written ; of which I have
particularly informed myself. Your own opinion, Sir,
on the affair of Gottenburg, is a lively and exact repre
sentation of the persons interested. I remember here
the expressions of an English poet :
’Is there a churchman who on God relies,
Whose life his faith and doctrine justifies?
They hunt good livings and abhor good lives.’
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