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1214 NOTES TO VOLUME II.
travelling this week I looked over Baron Swedenborg’s account of
Heaven and Hell. He was a man of piety, of strong understanding,
and most lively imagination. But he had a violent fever when he
was five and fifty years old, which quite overturned his understanding.
Nor did he ever recover it ; but it continued ’ majestic, but in ruins.’
From that time he was exactly in the state of that gentlemen at
Argos,
Qui se credebat miros audire tragados,
In vacuo lætus sessor, plausorque, theatro.
Who wondrous tragedies was wont to hear
Sitting alone in the empty theatre.
"His words, therefore, from that time were Agri somnia, the
dreams of a disordered imagination : just as authentic as ’Quevedo’s
Visions of Hell. ’ Of this work in particular I must observe that the
doctrine contained therein, is not only quite unproved, quite pre
carious from beginning to end, as depending entirely on the affection
of a single brain-sick man, but that in many instances, it is contra
dictory to Scripture, to Reason, and to itself. But over and above
this, it contains many sentiments that are essentially and dangerously
wrong. Such is that concerning the Trinity ; for he roundly affirms
God to be only one Person, who was crucified: so he revives and
openly asserts the long exploded heresy of the Sabellians and Patri
passians : yea, and that of the Anthropomorphites, affirming that
God constantly appears in heaven in the form of a man. And the
worst is, he flatly affirms, ’No one can go to heaven who believes
three persons in the Godhead; ’ which is more than the most violent
Arian or Socinian ever affirmed before.
"Add to this, that his ideas of heaven are low, grovelling, just
suiting a Mahomedan paradise : and his account of it has a natural
tendency to sink our conceptions, both of the glory of heaven and
of the inhabitants of it, whom he describes as far inferior both in
holiness and happiness to Gregory Lopez, or M. de Renty. And
his account of hell leaves nothing terrible in it. For, first, he
quenches the unquenchable fire. He assures us there is no fire
there ; only he allows that the governor of it, the Devil, sometimes
orders the spirits that behave ill, ’ to be laid on a bed of ashes.’
And secondly he informs you, that all the damned enjoy their
favourite pleasures. He that delights in filth, is to have his filth ;
yea, and his harlot too ! Now how dreadful a tendency must this
have, in such an age and nation as this ? I wish those pious men,
Mr. Clowes [see Note 218] and Mr. Clotworthy [Mr. Wesley probably
means here Mr. Cookworthy, of Note 219] would calmly consider
H
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