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Doc. 265.] 471
CUNO’S LETTER TO SWEDENBORG.
writings are contradictory thereto. For instance, you accept
two fundamental elements which are ever opposed to each
another, both of which according to your doctrinal definitions
seem to me equally eternal.* This very same doctrine was
formerly taught by Manes. The orthodox teachers will, there
fore, undoubtedly regard you as a follower of Manicheism.
Again, you deny the creation of angels and the fall of
Lucifer, the author of pride and of sin.† Concerning the fall
of our first parents you keep silence altogether. You assert
in your usual manner that in the whole heaven there is not
a single angel who had been created from the beginning ; and
that in hell also there is no devil who had been created an
angel of light, and had been cast down ; but you declare that
all in heaven, as well as in hell, originated from the human
race. You deny the resurrection of the flesh, and the
destruction or at least the dissolution of the world at the
Last Judgment, which, according to things seen by you, was
accomplished in the spiritual world in 1757, and in respect to
the Dutch on January 9.
"I postpone for a future more convenient place and occasion
an expressiou of my opinion on these and the other remaining
things. I am writing a letter now and no dissertation. I will be
brief. As long as you do not prove your visions and support
them by more solid arguments, neither a theologian, nor a
* This is a mere assumption on the part of Cuno, which has no basis
whatever in Swedenborg’s writings. All good, Swedenborg says, comes
from God ; all evil, and hence hell, from man. Yet Swedenborg teaches
nowhere, that man, and hence evil, are from eternity.
+ Swedenborg teaches that the Word of God is written not only for
men upon earth, but also for angels in heaven ; that therefore there is
an angelic or spiritual meaning, within its literal sense ; and while the
creation of angels cannot be proved from the letter of the Word at all,
he holds that the fall of Lucifer has a different spiritual meaning from
what appears in the letter; by Lucifer, in fact, he says, are represented
those who are from Babel or Babylon, i. e. followers of Roman-Catholicism,
and whose dominion extends even into heaven. And by the fall ofLucifer
is meant the downfall of their dominion (see H. H. no. 544, and D. P.
no. 231).
Their fall Swedenborg treats at great length in the Arcana Cœlestia,
Vol. 2, in giving the spiritual explanation of Genesis iii.
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