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Doc. 259.] 519
HARTLEY’S LETTER TO CLOWES.
those words of the Lord (Matt. vi, 22), ’If thine eye be
single, thy whole body shall be full of light.""
The relation of the doctrines taught by Swedenborg to
the Sacred Scripture, Mr. Hartley defines in the following
paragraphs.
34. "The establishment of a Divine Revelation, even by
God Himself, does not appear to have been designed, in any
age of the church, to supersede the vouchsafement of particular
revelations to particular persons, at different times, and on
certain occasions ; and credible it is, that seers of visions, and
extraordinary messengers, variously gifted , will be occasionally
commissioned, for the benefit and comfort of the church in
the future times of it; and if in reply to this it should be
asked, To what purpose then is the establishment of a Divine
Revelation, if it answer not all human requirements in religion
on every occasion? be it answered, That though an established
system of Divine institutes be of the highest importance and
benefit to mankind, as it serves for a common and safe
directory, both for faith and practice, and so to all the pur
poses of life and godliness, yet through a deplorable propensity
in our nature to degenerate, it has so happened, that every
church has by degrees departed from its primitive purity,
and either through the ease and temptations of civil establish
ments, or other manifold causes, sadly apostatised from virtue
and piety, to the love of the world, infidelity, and impiety.
In this case a people stands in a different and degraded
relation to their God, who, of His infinite compassion, is
graciously pleased to grant them extraordinary means for
their warning and conversion where, through their own fault,
the ordinary ones have failed of their due influence.
35. "Another important use of the established institutes
of a revealed religion, in connection with the vouchsafement
of extraordinary dispensations to particular persons, is that
of their serving as a criterion or test, whereby to try the
spirits whether they are of God ;’ for in our present state of
probation we stand betwixt the two worlds of light and dark
ness, truth and error, and as we have good spirits to befriend
us, so there are evil spirits to mislead and delude us. The
prophet Isaiah has laid down the following rule for distin
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