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600 REFUTATION OF FALSE REPORTS. [Doc. 270.
•
as the account states. Secondly none of Swedenborg’s friends
has ever stated that he lived at the houses of two peruke
makers, both in Cold Bath Fields ; which singular circumstance
they would not have failed to record, had it been true. Thirdly,
Mr. Hindmarsh, who interrogated Mr. Brockmer, after Wesley’s
second attack on Swedenborg had been made in 1783, states
distinctly that the peruke-maker alluded to by Mr. Wesley
was Mr. Richard Shearsmith." Fourthly, no one, besides
Mathesius, has ever stated that Swedenborg lived in Warner
Street. According to Bergström’s testimony (Document 263,
no. 8), Swedenborg lived in the Minories, in the Cold Bath
Fields [with Mr. Shearsmith], and once he lived for ten weeks
with Bergström in the King’s Arms Tavern in Wellclose
Square; and, besides, Mrs. Shaw states on the authority of
Mr. Shearsmith, that Swedenborg removed to his house from
Fetter Lane ; yet nowhere is mention made that he had lived
at a second peruke-maker’s in Cold Bath Fields. Fifthly,
granted that Mr. Peckitt’s statement is correct, and that
Swedenborg had lodged in Cold Bath Fields before removing
to Shearsmith’s, even in this case it must have been as late
as 1766 (see Introduction to Doc. 272), and not in 1743, as
is alleged by Mathesius.
We see, therefore, that Mathesius’ testimony when examined
exclusively in its own light, breaks down completely ; for it
is shown to be full of inconsistencies, and downright con
tradictions. We shall now hear what Mr. Brockmer has to
say in respect to it, whose words Mathesius pretended to quote.
Soon after the publication of John Wesley’s attack on
Swedenborg in the "Arminian Magazine" for 1783, Mr. Robert
Beatson,* of Rotherham in Yorkshire, undertook a vindication
of Swedenborg’s writings which had been "so grossly mis
represented, misquoted, and falsified by Mr. Wesley." After
* The Editors of the "Magazine of Knowledge" say concerning this
gentleman in 1791, "Mr. Robert Beatson, late of Rotherham, in Yorkshire,
but now an inhabitant of the spiritual world (to whose uncommon virtues
and eminent piety we can, from personal knowledge, bear public testimony),
a short time before his death employed himself in vindicating the writings
of Baron Swedenborg, which have been so grossly misrepresented, mis
quoted, and falsified, by Mr. Wesley."
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