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140 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
your wishes, as expressed in your kind favour of the 16th,
I send you the following memoir of the late Mr. Wesley,
as communicated to me by my late pious and learned
friend, Richard Houghton, Esq., of Liverpool, who was
also intimately acquainted with Mr. Wesley, insomuch
that the latter gentleman never visited Liverpool without
passing some time with Mr. Houghton. As near as I
can recollect, it was in the spring of the year 1773 that
I received the communication, one morning, when I
called on Mr. Houghton at his house, and at a time, too,
when the writings of the Hon. E. Swedenborg began to
excite public attention. These writings were at that
time unknown to myself, but not so to my friend Mr.
Houghton, who was in the habit of correspondence with
the Rev. T. Hartley on the subject, and was very eager
to make me acquainted with them. Accordingly, in the
course of our conversation, my friend took occasion to
mention the name of Mr. Wesley, and the manner in
which he, on a late visit to Liverpool, had expressed his
sentiments on those writings. We may now (said Mr.
Wesley,) burn all our books of Theology. God has
sent us a teacher from heaven ; and in the doctrines of
Swedenborg we may learn all that it is necessaryfor
us to know.
’
"The manner in which Mr. Wesley here expressed
himself was strong indeed ; so much so, that were it not
certain that his mind must have been at that time under
a very powerful influence in Swedenborg’s favour, he
might be suspected to have spoken ironically. This I
observed in my letter to Mr. Clowes ; to which he replies,
’ I can hardly conceive, from the manner in which it was
expressed by Mr. Houghton, that irony had any thing to
do with it:’ and Mr. Houghton must have known with
certainty whether it had or not. His repeating Mr.
Wesley’s observation to Mr. Clowes, as an inducement
to him to peruse the writings of Swedenborg, is a com
plete proof that Mr. H. believed it to mean what it
expresses. But an examination of dates will shew, that
Mr. Wesley’s statement to that gentleman was made
while the impression from Swedenborg’s supernatural
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