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Doc. 256.] 459
CUNO ON SWEDENBORG’S DOCTRINES.
mankind to be realized, it had become necessary that the
Lord should effect His Second Coming, and, at that Coming,
by means of the doctrines of the internal sense of the Word
which He would then reveal to mankind, establish a New
Church upon earth, which is meant by the New Jerusalem in
the Book of Revelation. This Cuno denies, maintaining that
this same end is now being attained by the Evangelical or
Lutheran church.
Cuno, therefore, while acknowledging one of the fundamental
doctrines of the New Church, which he claims to be a doctrine
of the Evangelical church, denies the Lord’s Second Coming;
he denies the mission of Swedenborg; which consisted "in re
ceiving the doctrines of the internal sense in his understanding,
and publishing them by the press" (T. C. R. 779) ; and he
denies the church of the New Jerusalem, which, by means of
these doctrines, is to be established upon earth. Yet with
all this he evinces a friendly disposition towards Swedenborg
personally, and declares (p. 114), "For my own part I cannot
regard our seer otherwise than as a pious, honest man, of whom
I cannot believe that he could possibly tell a deliberate false
hood ;" but still he is unwilling to accept him as a witness in
his own case, and refuses to accept the testimony which he
adduces in proof of the opening of his spiritual sight.
Such is the contradictory standpoint which Cuno occupies
in respect to Swedenborg, and which induces him alternately
to accept and to condemn his views.
2. Regarding the Apocalypsis Revelata he says further
(p. 56), "In this very same work Mr. Swedenborg displays
very great learning, and it is difficult to reconcile how a
man who at best may be called a spiritual hypochondriac,
is able to utter such profound things as nobody has ever be
fore thought of .... It cannot be denied that innumerable ex
planations and interpretations of the Apocalypse have been
printed, which are all contradictory to one another. Mr. Sweden
borg states as the reason of this, that the spiritual sense of
that work has been heretofore unknown. This is certainly
worth hearing. But if I should admit, that he is the first
mortal to whom this sense has been discovered, and that it is
his immediate mission to communicate these new discoveries
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