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1286 NOTES TO VOLUME II.
been glad to share ; but I never could see that it had any credible
basis
"Afflicted by Calvinism, yet refusing relief by mere good nature,
I found an anodyne in Swedenborgianism. I chanced to pick up a
copy of The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine on a second
hand bookstall, and, putting it in my desk, read it at odd moments.
Its statements, doctrinal and supernatural, interested me so much
that I procured Heaven and Hell, and began to frequent the New
Jerusalem Temple, as the Swedenborgian meeting-house was called.
I was introduced to the preacher, Oliver Prescott Hiller, an American,
and in his ministry, and in acquaintance with the congregation, I
felt translated to a happier world. In Swedenborgianism I did not
get rid of the notion of eternal damnation, but was taught to refer
the existence of hell entirely to human perversity. God desired to
take all to Heaven, but all would not go."
So far Mr. White permits us to have an insight into his personal
history For the present we shall add to this account simply, that
in course of time Mr. White, while still a young man, came to London ,
where he was for a number of years agent of the Swedenborg Society ;
and while in that capacity he published from 1855-1857 a periodical
entitled "The Newchurchman," in which he inserted an English trans
lation of twenty-six of Swedenborg’s letters to Ericus Benzelius ; see
Document 64, Vol. I, p. 229. In 1856, also, he reprinted from the
"Phonetic Journal" his first "Life of Swedenborg" which had appeared
in that journal during 1854 and 1855.
As a biographer of Swedenborg Mr. White occupies the position
of a literary Vertumnus, and as such his place in literature seems
to be without a parallel. For never before in the annals of literature
has the example been witnessed of a writer, within the short period
of ten years, turning a complete summersault in his convictions, not
on doctrinal subjects-for this would be excusable-but on the literary
and personal character of a man, dead for nearly a century, all
whose writings, and all the important particulars of whose life were as
fully known to the writer in the one case, as in the other.
Our endeavour in this Note will be to exhibit the contradictory
and antagonistic position which Mr. White in 1856 occupies in respect
to Mr. White in 1867 on the subject of Swedenborg ; and after showing
some additional contradictions which are contained in Mr. White’s
"Life of Swedenborg" of 1867, to examine in detail the charge which
he brings against Swedenborg’s moral character in discussing his
treatise on "Conjugial Love." Afterwards we shall discuss the equi
vocal position which he occupies on the question of Swedenborg’s
alleged insanity; and after explaining some errors which Mr. White
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