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812 [Doc. 309,
SWEDENBORG’S WRITINGS.
Like most persons who have fallen into poverty, he applied
to his religious friends for aid ; but the majority of them were
not able to afford this assistance, and as a security for the
repayment of certain sums which had been advanced to him,
he placed in their hands portions of the MSS. which had been
left in his care. How far such an act was justifiable we
cannot, perhaps, at this distance of time ascertain. But this
much is absolutely certain, Chastanier was in the most extreme
poverty, and, residing in a country where he was much more
an alien at that period than any native of France would now
consider himself, must have been keenly sensible of the help
lessness of his position ; indeed, we have now before us a copy,
in his own handwriting, of a letter in which this feeling is
expressed, together with a confession of his sole reposing,
next to Providence, on the brethren of the New Church.
Living thus precariously, and gradually falling into absolute
want, he may have felt it a duty, as well as a convenience
to himself, to deposit the MSS. in the hands of persons who
would feel interested in their preservation. If this was one
of his real motives, and we cannot doubt it, the event was
such that his own conscience, whatever may be our judgment
at this distance of time, could not but acquit him of all blame ;
for having exhausted alike his own funds and those which he
had borrowed, he took a journey to Edinburgh ; and there,
one bitter night, the poor old man, exposed in the open air
to the inclemency of the weather, and now nearly eighty years
of age, perished of cold. Thus miserably ended the last
earthly days of Benedict Chastanier." For further particulars
see Note 222.
"One portion of the MSS., the Diarium Minus, as it has
been called by Dr. Tafel [no. 7 among the missing MSS .
specified in the beginning of the present article ] , fell, as a
pledge, in this way, into the hands of the Rev. Joseph Proud,273
and was, at a subsequent period, presented by him to Mr. D.
R. M’Nab.
"Part of the remainder became, for some years, the pro
perty of the Rev. M. Sibly,272 who, as we were informed,
redeemed them from another gentleman, by paying him the
money advanced to Chastanier, when they were placed in his
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