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114 ’
DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
circumstances alleged to have occurred forty years before the charge was
brought forward, and which had never been heard of in the whole of the in-
termediate period ! What more palpable mark of fabrication could exist ?
*^ But if from the story of the fever and delirium (continues Mr. Noble), as-
sumed as true, any should continue to argue that Swedenborg remained insane
ever after ; with much more plausibility might it be argued, that a man who
became positively insane, and continued the remainder 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 distribution 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 experienced the deplorable
visitation; which happened, also, soon after he gave the information to Mr.
Wesley. The Abrege 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 Jeru-
salem 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 Ihe 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 :t
’
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 fall himself."
XX.
TESTIMONY
OF
THE CELEBRATED OBERLIN,
OF THE BAN-DE-LA-ROCHE, OR STEINTHAL,
RESPECTING SWEDENBORG’S INTERCOURSE WITH THE
SPIRITUAL WORLD.
This testimony is recorded in the Intellectual Repository fox April, 1840. pp. 151-162,
in a visit, which the Rev. J. H. Smithson paid to the worthy and exemplary Oberlin
two years prior to his death. Having described certain particulars of the journey from
Strasburg to the Ban-de-la-Roche where Oberlin lived, Mr. S. proceeds as follows :
—
* Since printed at length in the Intellectual Repository for January, 1830, and inserted
above p. 77.
t See above p. 78.
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