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498 TESTIMONY OF CONTEMPORARIES. [Doc. 258.
"TO MR. JOHN LEWIS, IN PATERNOSTER-ROW, CHEAPSIDE, LONDON.
"Dartmouth, October 15, 1749.
"Mr. John Lewis,
"Sir,-Accidentally reading the advertisement
of the Arcana Calestia, excited by the oddness of the title, I
presently ordered my friend in London to send me one. The
extraordinary degree of pleasure the reading of it has given
me, and the yet more expected from what more is to be
published, induces me to request advice as often as any new
publication happens, which I apprehend to be designed annually.
My reason for troubling you, is, because I very rarely see any
of the public papers, and, consequently, future advertisements
may escape my knowledge ; which, I hope will excuse me.
"I have long ardently wished to see the historical part of
the Old Testament, which seems only to regard the Jewish
dispensation, (and upon that account is too lightly regarded
by the major part of the present Christian world,) proved to
be as delightful, instructive, and as necessary for the knowledge
of Christians as the New. This Arcana Calestia gives me the
fullest satisfaction of. But the illumined author, whoever he
is, (is it Mr. Law?)* must expect a considerable army of
* William Law, the author of many works of popularity, was born in
1686, and died 1761. As a theologian, Law held tenets peculiar to himself,
which, either from being misunderstood, or misrepresented, subjected him
at different times to two very opposite imputations, that of being a Socinian,
and that of being a Methodist. It was in his latter days that Mr. Law
became most confused, according to one of his biographers, from having
bewildered his imagination with the reveries of Jacob Boehme, for whose
sake he learned German that he might read his works, and whom he
pronounces "the strongest, the plainest, the most open, intelligible, awaken
ing, convincing writer that ever was." Walton in his "Notes and Materials
for an adequate Biography of Law" publishes the following letter, from
which it appears that Law was acquainted with Swedenborg’s writings :
"King’s Cliff, Northamptonshire, April 9, 1758.
"Pray tell Mr. Wood that I desire him to buy me the 8th volume of
the Arcana Calestia : he bought the first seven volumes for me, and so
knows the volume that I have not. I shall never go through them, but
as I have gone so far in the expense I shall take his last volume."
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