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196 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
as you see me before you, so true is everything which I have written—and I
could have said more, had I been permitted. When you come into eternity you
will see all things as I have stated and described them ; and we shall have much
to disco orse about them with each other.’ I then asked him whether he would
take the Lord’s holy supper? He replied, with thankfulness, that I meant well;
but that being a member of the other world, he did not need it : he would how-
ever gladly take it in order to show the connection and union between the church
in heaven and the church on earth. He then asked me if I had read his views
on the sacrament. Before administering the sacrament I inquired of him, whe-
ther he confessed himself to be a sinner ? Certainly, said he, so long as I carry
about with me this sinful body. With deep and affecting devotion, with folded
hands, and with his head uncovered, he confessed his own unworthiness, and
received the holy supper. After which he presented me in gratitude, with a
copy of his great work, the Arcana Ccclestia, of which only nine copies remained
unsold, which were to be sent into Holland.
" On another occasion when I visited him, I heard him, as I was ascending the
stairs, speaking with great energy, as though he were addressing a considerable
company ; but as I came into the ante-chamber where his female attendant was
sitting, I asked her who was with the Assessor ; she replied that nobody was
with him, and that he had been speaking in that manner for three days and
nights. As I entered his chamber, he greeted me very tranquilly, and asked me
to take a seat; he then told me that he had been tempted and plagued during
ten days by evil spirits which the Lord had sent to him, and that he had never
before been tempted by spirits so evil as these ; but that he was now again fa-
vored with the company of good spirits.
" When he was in health I once paid him a visit in company with a Danish
clergyman ; we found him sitting in the middle of the room, at a round table,
writing. The Hebrew Bible, which appeared to constitute his whole library,
was lying before him. After he had greeted us, he pointed to the opposite side
of the table, and said, ’
Just now the apostle Peter was here and stood there ;
and it is not long since all the apostles were with me ; indeed, they often visit
me,’ In this manner he spoke without reserve ; but he never sought to make
proselytes. He told us, that he contemplated writing a book in which he v\;’ould
prove, from the writings of the apostles that the Lord is the true and only God,
and that there is none besides him. To the question, how it was that nobody
besides himself enjoyed such revelations and intercourse with spirits, he replied,
that every man could, at the present time, have this intercourse, as well as in
the times of the Old Testament; but that the true hindrance why it is not
so now, is the sensual state into which mankind have fallen. With other news,
which on one occasion I received from Sweden through the post, was the an-
nouncement of the death of Swedenborg’s sister, the widow Lundstedt. I com-
municated this information to a Swedish gentleman, whose name was Meier,
who was travelling in England at that time, and who happened to be at my house
when the news came. This person went immediately to Swedenborg, and con-
veyed the intelligence of the death of his sister. When he returned he said, that
he thought Swedenborg’s declaration respecting his intercourse with the dead
could not be true, since he knew nothing of the death of his sister. The next
time I saw the old man I mentioned this to him, when he said, ’ that of such
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