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1088 NOTES TO VOLUME II.
obscurity or ignorance, not because he did not know what truth is,
for that he knew above others, but because in the other life know
ledges are confirmed, so that they become the truths of faith ; and
when the life of him who has these knowledges is repugnant to
them, it follows that he knows nothing, and is in obscurity. For if
any one is in the light of knowledges, and if his life is repugnant
to them, then he does not love the things confirming the knowledges
of faith against his life, but he rather loves the things confirming
his life against the knowledges; and when there is such an anta
gonism, it follows that he is in obscurity, and in ignorance. Into
such a state I also was reduced, before it was granted to me to
speak with spirits. I was allowed to comfort him by this conside
ration, that into this state those are first reduced who are in the
knowledges of the truth of faith, and whose life does not agree
therewith, which is a species of vastation; and that then the Lord
first inseminates truths, and the light of truth begins gradually to
shine forth from this obscure or dark state."
From this passage we learn that "before it was granted Sweden
borg to speak with spirits, he was reduced into a state of ignorance."
This is corroborated by the following passages from the Diary
of 1744.
In no. 192 Swedenborg says, "I have no knowledge about religion,
but have lost all." And again in no. 194, "I discovered that I
am in such a state that I know nothing on this subject [i. e.
religion]."
In no. 195 he says: "This is a prediction that the Lord Himself
will instruct me, as soon as I have arrived in that state in which
I shall know nothing, and in which all my preconceived notions will
be removed from me; which is the first state of learning: or in
other words, that I must first become a child, and that then I
shall be able to be nurtured up in knowledge, as is the case with
me now."
IV. In a letter adressed to Dr. Beyer,22 dated Feb., 1767 (Docu
ment 234, p. 260), Swedenborg says as follows, "You desire to know
my opinion respecting the writings of Böhme and L[aw] (see p. 498) :
I have never read them, and I was forbidden to read authors on
dogmatic and systematic theology, before heaven was opened to me;
because unfounded opinions and fictions might have easily insinuated
themselves thereby, which afterwards could only have been removed
with difficulty."
The same statement Swedenborg makes in the Diary of 1744,
where he says in no. 121 : "It was represented to me in a certain
manner that I was not to pollute myself by reading other books
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