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1042 [Doc. 314.
APPENDIX.
you will even accede to Swedenborg’s sentiments with a full
assent, should you be pleased, and would your duties permit
you, to take a deeper and more general view of all his
writings.
"For myself, whilst I am reading, neither his name, nor
the dignity of his person, passes before my eyes, which he
indeed himself wishes to extinguish, in order that the reader
may only hold in honour the holiness of the subjects on which
he treats and I am no longer led to inquire, by what deep
attainments in sciences and philosophy he had arrived at
celebrity before the year 1745, but my whole endeavour is,
to acquire a rational judgment of his theosophical doctrines,
according to true Biblical theosophy. Besides, it is impossible
to see Divine things, such as all those which relate to the
kingdom of the Lord, heaven, and the church, in any other
than a Divine, that is, a heavenly light. Such things can receive
no light from the light of nature, or the sun of the natural
world, or, as we may say, from the pomp of all natural sciences,
which fall under the name of philosophy, and the merely human
understanding, be they as pure as possible. Undoubtedly, what
is superior can flow into what is inferior, but not vice versa;
and the truths derived from heaven can illustrate and correct
the truths derived from the world, but not these the former.
We certainly stand in need of illumination from the Lord and
Saviour through the heavens, to be enabled to understand what
is spiritual and celestial, which may then be confirmed with
man, through rational and natural sciences, provided we do
not believe that power and strength are derived from the
latter. I also remember that Swedenborg nowhere depends,
in his theological writings, upon the scientific and philosophical
principles he had learned before, or argues from them; still
less does he draw forth his arguments from mechanical philo
sophy ; from the motion, rest, figure, position, or properties of
matter; from natural phenomena ; nor does he defend the
nature and property of spiritual things by them, forasmuch
as they are as distinct as the poles from natural things,
although they coincide in appearance; at the same time that
he has himself a knowledge of this branch of philosophy, and
strongly recommends the pursuit of it to others . He says
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