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284 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
overflowings of iniquity amongst all ranks and degrees of
men ; the general disregard shown to things of a serious
and eternal nature ; the small remains left of the fear of
God, and a reverence for His laws in the minds of man
kind ; the various and violent disputings amongst different
sects and parties respecting truth ; nation thus rising
against nation, and kingdom against kingdom ; ’ the
growing denial of that most important and essential
article of Christian Faith, the Divinity of the Christian
Redeemer, whose very name it has even become an offence
to mention in most of our genteel circles ; the difficulty of
discovering where and what truth is ; and the greater
difficulty of holding fast to it, when it is discovered ; the
accumulated pressure of human miseries, in their different
forms and degrees, and especially the inward troubles and
exercises which good men experience ; not to mention
the general apprehension prevailing in the minds of many
serious persons, that some extraordinary operation ofthe
Divine Providence is now in agitation ; all these, with
divers other circumstances of a similar kind, which might
be adduced, are certainly strong collateral testimonies in
favour of his interpretation, and must needs have pro
portionable weight with candid and unprejudiced minds,
to incline them to believe it.
66
6
But after all, it is not the testimony of fact and ex
perience uniting its evidence with that of our author’s
interpretation of prophecy ; neither is it the brightness
and power of Divine Truth, discoverable in such inter
pretation ; nor yet the consistency, the harmony, the
clearness, the edifying tendency of every page of his
theological writings, which will of themselves lead to con
viction, and beget a full persuasion of the author’s faithful
testimony in your minds, or in the minds of others : to
produce this happy effect, it is necessary that the reader’s
understanding be previously prepared, by a meet dis
position for the reception of truth, without which pre
paration the truth itself, let it be ever so much confirmed,
must needs appear untrue, and the more so, in proportion
to the unprepared state of the mind and temper, agreeably
to the declaration of the Truth itself, ’ He who doeth evil,
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