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Doc. 256.] 467
CUNO’S LETTER TO SWEDENBORG.
remains still to be proved ; and as long as this is not accepted,
there is no ground on which to base a discussion.
"I have closely examined the basis of your system. Its
chief authority are the things you testify to have seen.*
You relate wonderful things you have seen and heard. You
desire to inform the world that it is granted to you to
be at the same time in the spiritual world with angels, and
in the natural world with men. You talk of great things,
which the incredulous world is unwilling to believe. Such
of your readers as are not concerned about their eternal
salvation, laugh at such a new and, so to speak, amphibious
teacher; the possibility of whose existence no one who is
endowed with sound reason, can imagine to himself; and still
* By no means. Swedenborg himself states the basis of his system thus :
"As the Lord cannot [now] manifest Himself in person, and yet foretold
that He would come again, and establish a New Church, which is the New
Jerusalem, it follows that He would do this by a man who could not only
receive the doctrines of that church in his understanding, but also publish
them by the press. I testify in truth that the Lord manifested Himself before
me, His servant, that He commissioned me to do this work, and after
wards opened the sight of my spirit, and so let me into the spiritual world,
permitting me to see the heavens and the hells, and also to converse with
angels and spirits, and this now continually for many years ; and , likewise,
that from the first day of my call to this office, I have never received any
thing relating to the doctrines of that church from any angel, but from the
Lord alone while I was reading the Word" (T. C. R. 779).
Swedenborg himself, therefore, declares that "nothing relating to the
doctrines of the New Church was received by him from any angel, but
from the Lord alone while reading the Word," whence it follows again
that the whole of the doctrine of the New Church is drawn from the
Word; that therefore the Word of God is the basis of his system, and
not "things heard and seen." The things seen and heard by Swedenborg
in the spiritual world are simply confirmatory of the New Church, but
are not the basis on which it rests.
In order therefore to try Swedenborg’s system honestly and fairly, it
must be tried in the light of the Word of God. And if any one has once
recognized the scriptural character of his teachings, he finds no longer any
difficulty in admitting his testimony in respect to "things heard and seen;"
because they uniformly confirm the doctrines which "he received from the
Lord alone while reading the Word."
See also the Rev. T. Hartley on this subject in Document 258, nos. 23,
33 to 37.
30*
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