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150 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
who became positively insane, and continued the re
mainder of his life in that state, might have been partially
deranged long before it was suspected : and if so, we
could easily account for Mathesius’ imagining the tale he
propagated; for that he went mad, is a well-authenticated
fact. We are by no means prone to assume the dis
tribution of divine judgments ; but it really is difficult to
avoid thinking that we behold one here. All must allow
it to be a remarkable coincidence, that the man who first
imputed insanity to Swedenborg, and was the chief cause
of its being believed by others, should himself have ex
perienced the deplorable visitation ; which happened, also,
soon after he gave the information to Mr. Wesley. The
Abregé des Ouvrages d
’ Em. Swedenborg, which was
published at Stockholm in 1788, states in the preface,
that Mathesius had become insane, and was then living in
that state in that city. The same is affirmed in the New
Jerusalem Magazine ; one of the editors of which was
Mr. C. B. Wadstrom, a Swedish gentleman of great
respectability, well known for his efforts in the cause of
the abolition of the slave-trade, and who must have had
ample means of knowing the fact. In a MS. minute,
also, in my possession, of a conversation held by Mr.
Provo, May 2nd, 1787, with Mr. Bergstrom, master of
the King’s Arms ( Swedish) Hotel, in Wellclose-square ;
the latter says as follows :+ Mr. Mathesius was an
opponent of Swedenborg, and said that he was lunatic,
&c.; but it is remarkable that he went lunatic himself;
which happened one day when he was in the Swedish
church and about to preach: I was there and saw it:
he has been so ever since, and sent back to Sweden,
where he now is this was about four years ago.’ All
the accounts agree : and thus evident it is, that into the
pit which this unhappy man digged for another, did he
:
imself."
* Since printed at length in the Intellectual Repository for
January, 1830, and inserted above p. 90.
+ See above p. 92.
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