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Doc. 313.] 973
CHRONOLOGICAL ACCOUNT.
That he finished the MS. of Vol. I of the Arcana Coelestia in
Holland, is proved by Document 136, F, where he reminded himself
"
to take the Ex[positionem] Sp[iritualem] (the Spiritual Explanation
.
of Genesis), and lay it on the top." Ifthe MS. of the Arcana Celestia,
Vol. I, however, was finished in October 1748, Swedenborg must
have entered upon its composition early in 1748, or rather in the
latter part of 1747, i. e. before he had quite finished his Biblical
Concordance.
In England Swedenborg stayed only long enough to make the
necessary arrangement with John Lewis for the regular appearance
of the Arcana Calestia; and before that gentleman had announced
in the newspapers the appearance of Vol. I, Swedenborg had already
left the country again; probably, because he was instructed to preserve
a strict incognito in respect to the authorship of his work. The
announcement of the publication of Vol. I must have been made
during the summer months of 1749 ; for the letter which Stephen
Penny wrote to John Lewis, after reading the volume, (see Docu
ment 258, B, p. 498,) is dated October 15, 1749. But by that
time, as we have seen, Swedenborg was away again in Holland,
probably in Amsterdam; for his letters from England and Sweden
were all addressed to that town to the care either of Joachim Wret
man,"
147
or Messrs. Grill.112 It is probable, that, as Swedenborg
engaged his lodgings in London only for six months, at the expiration
of that term, i. e. towards the close of May, 1749, he left London
again for Amsterdam. At the approach of autumn, however, in the
same year he went from Amsterdam to Aix-la-Chapelle, where he
spent the winter; as appears from Documents 210 to 213, which consist
of letters addressed to him at that place by Joachim Wretman.
Concerning Volume I John Lewis states in Document 258, p. 494,
"This gentleman (i. e. Swedenborg) with indefatigable pains and
labour spent one whole year in studying and writing the first volume
of the Arcana Cœlestia, was at the expense of two hundred
pounds to print it, and also advanced two hundred pounds more
for the printing of the second volume; and when he had done
this, he gave express orders, that all the money that should arise
in the sale of this large work should be given towards the charge
of the propagation of the gospel." The prospectus of Vol. II, from
which this is extracted, appeared on February 5, 1750 ; and there the
publisher states (Document 258, p. 492), that "the second volume
is printing, both in Latin and English; to be published in cheap
numbers, that the public may have it in an easier manner, in either
tongue, than in whole volumes." On p. 496 he says further, "This
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