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Doc. 245.] 329
DR. BEYER’S DEFENCE.
the Scriptures ; or who cleave to the letter, like the Jews, in
their interpretation of the sense of Scripture ; or who are timid
and afraid of finding a ghost in every line ; further, those who
hate the very name of Swedenborg, or who are altogether
unlearned, and not grounded in philology and the sciences ;
or those who have not patience to read and study a thing in
its whole connection ; or who are either unable or unwilling
to use the faculties with which they have been endowed to follow
the author by an orderly course of reasoning into the region
of abstract ideas ; and, finally, those who are entirely absorb
ed by lusts and by the world.
"But, on the other hand, the lover of the truth, who is
free from all these things, and who is willing in a spirit
of impartiality to try the spirits whether they are of God
(1 John iv, 1 ), and especially he who prays to God for illus
tration and is willing to do the will of Him who sent Jesus
(John vii, 16, 17), upon considering the writings of the above
author will at once notice a circumstance which is rendered
remarkable by the long time during which it has lasted, viz.
that although more than twenty years have now elapsed since
these particular writings began to be published, and distributed
among the academies and libraries, and the most learned men
in most European countries, not a single refutation of them
has thus far, to the best of our knowledge, come to light ; if
we except a few one-sided reviews, filled with crude and
derogatory assertions lacking all rational demonstration. Again,
he will see that all Swedenborg’s works give evidence of an
unexpected insight into all the so-called learned languages,
as the Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, without mentioning the Latin,
which knowledge with him is fully commensurate with the im
portance of the matters on which he treats ; further, that he
possesses in a remarkable degree a knowledge of various
commendable and useful sciences, as, of philosophy in its
most abstruse depths, of mathematics, architecture, natural
history, chemistry, experimental philosophy, astronomy, history,
and especially of anatomy, and others ; that a consistency
prevails thoughout all his works, and that not a single real
contradiction can be discovered there ; that there is everywhere
in his treatises an unbroken order, and wherever possible a
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