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1030 [Doc. 314.
APPENDIX.
a wish of Spener. This call it was impossible for me to resist.
In order to combat the fever I seized the pen at ten, at
twelve, and at one o’clock, in order to write down my grounds,
which I had recently elaborated, for proving the orthodoxy
of Jacob Bohme.40 Without troubling myself about my
family, whom I had commended to God, I was compelled to
write this then, being unable to do anything more. The second
part of the work was projected first, as my last legacy, in the
sight of God ; after which I was prepared to die. Spener’s
opinion I appended to the work. Some time afterwards, when
Chancellor Reuss had read me a letter from Copenhagen
containing some information about Swedenborg, through Pro
fessor Kies I became acquainted with his Arcana Celestia.
Thirty years previously I had studied Swedenborg’s Principia
Rerum Naturalium in folio, which I preferred much to Wolf’s¹8
philosophy on account of its leading to the Sacred Scripture.
It is wonderful how a philosopher, who was accustomed to
think according to the rules of mechanics, should have become
a prophet ! As the accounts which I derived from him, agreed
with the truths which had become confirmed in me during my
illness, I did not take counsel with flesh and blood, but trans
lated the work in the sight of God, thinking that the foolishness
of God is wiser than the mechanical intelligence of man.
Nevertheless, I inquired of Prof. Schott in respect to the
translation. He assured me that as the book had been
published some time, I need not trouble myself about the
translation. This is my second motive. The third is, that
formerly, during my stay in Hirsau, I had been very intimate
with Mr. Schill, the master of the school in Calw, who con
ferred with the departed ... What appears most strange in
Swedenborg, Schill himself related to me in holy fear, lamenting
that he must keep silence about these things, lest he should
give offence. A fourth motive was this, that Baron von Velt
heim sent for me in Herrenberg, and called upon me to
translate Swedenborg, because his conversation with the spirit
of Prince William246 had been attested to him from the mouth
of the Duchess of Brunswick, who had heard it from the
Queen of Sweden, her sister, and who on that account thinks
highly of Swedenborg. Such urgent motives sent by the Divine
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