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ANECDOTES COLLECTED BY MR. ROBSAHM. 6»
they consulted together, and supposed he was dead, from some great fright.
They intended to break open the door, or to assemble their friends. At last the
man went to the window, and discovered, to his great joy, that his master was
alive, turning in his bed ; and the next day he rang his bell. The woman went
in, and related her own. and her husband’s uneasiness for him ; he told her with
a cheerful countenance, that he had been very well, and in want of nothing.
" On arriving at Gottenburg from London, he was told that his house had been
destroyed by the flames, in the great fire that burnt almgst all the south suburbs
of Stockholm, in 1756. No, answered Swedenborg, my house is not burnt; the
fire only reached to such and such a part. What he said was true ; and the
circumstance was then of so recent a nature, that he could have had no particu-
lar account of it, either by letter or by any person. It likewise appears tiiat he
had predicted that such a fire would happen.
" One day a prisoner was publicly executed ; Mr. Robsahm went in the even-
ing to visit Swedenborg, and asked him, how a malefactor, in the moment of
his execution, finds himself on entering the world of spirits ? He answered
;
when he lays his head on the block, he loses his senses, and that, after the be-
heading, when the spirit enters the world of spirits, the prisoner finds himself
alive, tries to make his escape, is in expectation of death, and in a great fright,
as thinking either on the happiness of heaven, or the miseries of hell in that
moment. At last, such a one is associated with the good spirits, who discover
to him, that he is really departed from the natural world. And then he is left
to the exercise of his own inclinations, which lead him to the eternal place of
his abode.* Swedenborg added, that a man ripened in evil, whom the law and
the axe, or halter, removes from earth, although apparently repenting, always
remains evil to eternity ; because his conversion is forced, and not performed
out of his own free will, which God requires. For unless his crimes had thrown
him into prison, where he sees death impending, he would not have turned his
thoughts to God, much less his heart, which is hardened by custom to a wicked
life ; and perceiving himself, after death, to live as before, he rushes headlong
into the same wicked practices, as he did in the world, and thus is quickly led
on to the hell, with the spirits of which he was in conjunction while on earth.
It is a very different case, added he, with those who, indeed, are executed for
some crime, which they have committed in drunkenness or passion, but with-
out any design; such persons repent earnesdy of their actions; and unless they
have,’ in the course of their life, confirmed themselves in opposition to the com-
mandments of God, they become after death, when divested of their infirmities,
happy spirits.
"Although Swedenborg openly avowed and maintained the most profound
veneration for the Sacred Scriptures; although he never supported one principle
contrary to the decalogue, or a good Christian life ; although his conduct was ex-
emplary ; and although he never s[)oke either against the government or particular
persons, he was not exempted from persecutions ; he fo und enemies so determin-
ed to do him mischief, that he deemed it necessary to leave the capital that he
might not fall into their hands. A young man, in particular, went even to his
own house, with a design to assassinate him; the gardener’s wife told him that
* This transformation is amply described in his Treatise of Heaven and Hell.
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