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Doc. 231.] 253
ETINGER TO SWEDENBORG.
have become a prophet * and seer, as has been the case in
the first times. But as the spirits of the prophets who speak
from the spirit, are subject to the prophets to whom it is
granted to speak according to the spirit, 1 Cor. xii, 1 , you
will have no objection to being tried.
Is not the Sacred Scripture, yea the Holy Revelation, a
book to which all have access who read and hear? We read
in Isa. xxxiv, 16, "Seek ye in the Book of the Lord ; no one
of these shall fail. " An inhabitant of this earth is therefore
told to seek even before he has received from you the dis
covery of the spiritual sense. If nothing of the unknown things
of heaven may be understood without you, the Revelation, be
fore your time, has been read in vain.† But it is given there
to understand, that all have to expect a city whose architect
is God.‡
What new doubts you raise thereby in me, who have been
so anxious to hear of your discoveries ! The world is unbe
lieving enough, without your depriving it of the power of under
* Swedenborg expressly repudiates in his first letter to tinger
(Document 229) the character of a prophet which he attributes to him
here ; for he says, "My writings concerning the New Jerusalem cannot be
called prophecies, but revelations."
† Dr. Imanuel Tafel in reply to this says (p. 351), "This is a most in
correct conclusion. For is it the only purpose of the Sacred Scripture, to
teach us ’ the unknown things of heaven?’ The Sacred Scripture has not
been among men in vain, if it gave to each at all times what he then
needed and was able to comprehend ; and, according to Swedenborg, this
knowledge the Sacred Scripture was able to dispense even before the re
velation of the spiritual sense. It is quite possible, however, that our wants
at the present time are different from what they were in former times ;
and, likewise, that our faculty of comprehension at the present time is
more matured than it was formerly, and this might very well have been
the reason why the spiritual sense is discovered now and was not before ;
besides, the revelation of the spiritual sense at the present time does not
exclude the possibility of some, according to their need and their faculty
of comprehension, discovering some things of the spiritual sense before,
although not so clearly, and not so correctly."
The same writer says (p. 351), "Certainly, a city was to be expected
whose architect would be God ; ’ yet it would be absurd, and at the same
time contradictory, to understand a material city thereby ; for by compar
ing collateral portions of Scripture, it becomes very evident that a spiritual
city must be understood by it."
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