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TESTIMONY OF THE REV. JOHN WESLEY. 141
communication was acting in all its force. Mr. Clowes’
interview with Mr. Houghton was in the spring of 1773.
Mr. Wesley does not appear to have been at Liverpool
between that time and the 10th of the preceding October,
when he returned from his last great circuit. In that
circuit he did visit Liverpool, and was there early in April,
1772. This, then, must be the "late visit" mentioned
by Mr. Houghton ; and this was within six weeks after
he had received the extraordinary communication from
Swedenborg. This is certain : and it is also highly pro
bable, that, at the time of his visiting Liverpool, the effect
of that communication was greatly strengthened, by the
verification of the announcement, which, we have seen,
Swedenborg had made to him, of the day of his own
death. He died, as he had announced, on the 29th of
March : there can be little doubt that a notice of it
appeared in the papers : it would thence, it is highly
probable, be known to Mr. Wesley when he was at
Liverpool, about a fortnight afterwards : and the words
he then uttered to Mr. Houghton will not appear stronger
than he might be expected to use, when two such recent
and completely incontrovertible proofs of the truth of
Swedenborg’s claims were operating on his mind.
"Yet Mr. Wesley, thus miraculously convinced of the
truth of Swedenborg’s claims, (as far, at least, as relates
to his intercourse with the spiritual world, ) afterwards
exerted himself to check the extension of the same con
viction to others ! in which, however, he only afforded a
proof of Swedenborg’s constant assertion, that miraculous
evidence is inefficacious for producing any real or per
manent change in a man’s confirmed religious sentiments.
When Mr. Wesley uttered the strong declaration res
pecting Swedenborg and his writings, he spoke of the
latter, rather from what he expected to find them, than
from what he actually knew them to be. The probability
is, that he at this time knew little more of them than he
had learned from the tract On the Intercourse :’ which
contains, probably nothing that he would except against;
especially as it is certain, as will be seen presently, that
even the treatise On Heaven and Hell, which gives the
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