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950 [Doc. 313 .
SWEDENBORG’S WRITINGS.
This part is incomplete ; nor does it seem to have been com
pleted by the author. It was photo-lithographed by the editor of
these Documents in 1870, in Stockholm. For further particulars, see
Document 310, Codex 51.
1745. (80.) Historia Creationis a Mose tradita (The History
of Creation as related by Moses), in MS. It fills 25 pages
in Volume I of what is known as the Adversaria (no. 82).
This is the first treatise Swedenborg wrote after the full opening
of his spiritual sight, which took place in the middle of April,
1745. The author himself gives the following account of it : "The
origin of the earth, paradise, the nursery of the living, and the birth
of Adam were discussed in Part I of my treatise on ’The Worship
and Love of God.’ That work, however, was written under the
leadership of the understanding, or according to the thread of reason.
As human intelligence, however, cannot be trusted in any respect,
unless it is inspired by God, therefore it becomes necessary in the
interest of truth to compare what has been laid down in the above
named work with the revelation in the Sacred Writings, and in the
present case with the history of creation revealed by God to Moses,
and thus to examine carefully how far they agree : for whatever does
not harmonize thoroughly with revelation, must be declared to be
altogether false, or the insane product of our rational mind."
With the present work, therefore, Swedenborg directed himself
to the study of the Word of God, and offered to it the homage of
his natural science. That his spiritual sight was already fully opened
when he wrote it, appears from a remark on p. 15, where he speaks
of himself as having been introduced into heaven, and as convers
ing there with spirits, "having become as it were a spirit himself."
Swedenborg’s illumination was progressive. In the doctrines of
the New Jerusalem revealed, through his instrumentality to mankind,
we learn that in the Sacred Scripture there are four distinct senses,
the celestial, the spiritual, the spiritual-natural or interior historical,
and the literal sense. When he first approached the study of the
Sacred Scripture, be could only see the literal sense in it, and thus
in the first chapters of Genesis he could only see the creation of
the natural universe. He was not able to see more, even though his
spiritual sight had been fully opened. The reason is that he was
not to be a mere passive instrument for the transmission of spiritual
knowledge to mankind, but what he was to communicate he was
also to understand rationally.
The above treatise, therefore, marks the first step in the author’s
study of the Divine Word, when he discovered in it merely its
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