Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Sidor ...
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
210 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
be a matter of interest to learn with what reception those marvellous developments
met when first announced, in our vernacular speech, to the Christian world. As might
be supposed, the writers regard them as the outbirth of a crazed enthusiasm, and the
index reference to one of them is thus worded :
" Swedenborg, a remarkable fanatic of
the present age, account of." But the reader will still perceive a certain under-tone of
surprise indicating a misgiving in their judgment, a latent suspicion that after all there
is too much method in this madness to allow of its being considered as pure dementia.
How little did they dream that the time would come when not the adoption, but the
rejection, of these doctrines and disclosures would be an impeachment of mental sanity
!
—The first is a notice of
THE TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.*
«« 111 our Review for June, 1770, we gave an account of a small quarto volume,
containing some of Baron Swedenborg’s lucubrations ; and which was proba-
bly intended as an introduction to farther publications of the same kind. In
that work, we had some information concerning the family, rank, and office, as
also of the peculiar turn and disposition of this extraordinary person. The pre-
sent much larger performance, containing upwards of. 500 pages, presents us
with the same enthusiastic reveries, and unaccountable sallies of imagination,
of which a specimen was given in the book above-mentioned. We observe in
it the marks of natural good sense and ingenuity, as well as of application and
learning; but intermixed with so much mysticism, and farther accompanied
with such astonishing accounts of what the Author has seen and heard when
he was admitted to converse with angels and spirits in the invisible world, that,
though his relations are delivered in a plausible and coherent manner, it is im-
possible not to conclude that they are the productions of a disordered brain.
We meet continually with these memorabilia, as they are called, which, it might
have been supposed, were only intended as a kind of allegories to diversify his
work, and by this means to amuse and more strongly to impress his readers :
but he asserts with the greatest coolness and confidence that he has frequently
been admitted, during the last twenty-seven years of his life, into the unseen
worlds, and that the accounts he gives are not chimeras or inventions, but
founded on what he has truly seen and heard ; and this not m a kind of dream
or vision, but when he was fully awake.
*’
The baron has conceived some notion of a great alteration which took place
in the spiritual world in the year 1757, when, if we understand him right, the
New Church, or Nova Hierosolyma, as he elsewhere calls it, began to be erected
and the last judgment {ultimum judicium) was held in the world of spirits, which,
says he, I do attest, because, when I was broad awake, I beheld it with
mine own eyes. He tells us that all that is said in the scriptures concerning a
new heaven and a new earth, and the second advent of Christ, is to be explained
and understood, not literally, but in a spiritual manner.
" The doctrine and practice of this new church, of which our Author seems to
consider himself as a special messenger, are laid before us in this volume. We
observe, that he strenuously asserts the unity of the Deity, although he acknowl-
edges a Trinity ; but, at the same time, declares, that this Trinity was not till the
* " Vera Christiana Religio : continens universam Theologiam novce EcclesicB a Domino
apud Danielem, cap. vii. 13, 14, et in Apocalypsi, cap. xxi. 1, 2, prcedictcB. The True
Christian Religion : containing the whole Theology of the New Church, &c. By Eman-
uel ^wedenborg, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. 4to. Amsterdam, 1771."
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
