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REFUTATION OF MR. WESLEY’S FALSE REPORTS. 147
"The other person, whom Mr. Wesley names as
having given him the same information as Mr. Brockmer
had done, was Mr. Mathesius, a Swedish clergyman.
Of the credit due to this Mathesius, the following extract
of a letter from Christopher Springer, Esq., a Swedish
gentleman of distinction then resident in London, and
the intimate friend of Swedenborg, will enable the reader
to form a just and correct estimate. Speaking of Swe
denborg’s death, he observes, * When the deceased
found his end approaching, and expressed a wish to have
the communion administered to him, somebody present
at the time proposed sending for Mr. Mathesius, the
officiating minister of the Swedish Church. This person
was known to be a professed enemy of Swedenborg’s, and
had set his face against his writings. It was he that
raised and spread the false account of Swedenborg’s
having been deprived of his senses. Swedenborg there
fore declined taking the sacrament from him, and actually
received it from the hands of another ecclesiastic of his
own country, named Fernelius, who at that time was a
reader of Swedenborg’s writings, and is said to have con
tinued to do so ever since, at Stockholm, where he is now
living (in 1786) ; and I have been assured, that, on this
occasion, Swedenborg expressly exhorted him to continue
steadfast the truth. Mr. Mathesius is said to
become insane himself,+ a short time after this ; and
becoming thereby incapable of his function, has existed
ever since, in that melancholy state, upon the bounty of
the king of Sweden.
’
"What now are we to say of the report first invented
by Mr. Mathesius the Lutherian divine, afterwards pro
pagated by Mr. Wesley the Arminian divine, and lastly
by Mr. Pike the Baptist divine, but that they each found
it the easiest and most convenient argument to be drawn
against the heavenly doctrines contained in the writings of
Emanuel Swedenborg ? When the theologians of former
days found themselves unable to withstand the new, but
6
* See above p. 105. We repeat the extract here for the sake of
the connexion.
+ See above p. 93.
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