parts; and yet, says Swedenborg, with the Council of Nice begins the great apostacy from Christian truth, which lasts down to his own time! But the notion of apostacy, implies the idea of perversity and disorder. How then would it be possible to find a regular developement in the four Christian Churches, the three last members whereof are to be, in the same relation to the first, as summer, autumn, and winter, to the spring ; or even as youth, manhood, and old age, to infancy! Where a well-ordered developement is observed, where a regular transition, from one state to another, is manifest, a rejection of the original vital principle is not conceivable. Where, on the other hand, this is rejected, as Swedenborg accuses the whole Church subsequent to the Council of Nice, of casting off such a principle, there a regular developement is not possible. Even our finisher of the Church had a sense of the incoherence of his historical constructions. On this account he endeavours to excuse, in some manner, the apostacy, and speaks of the beneficial variety of religious differences, that mutually enlighten one another, and even lets the remark escape him, that he had been informed, that those Churches, which are in different goods and truths, if only their goods have relation to the love of the Lord, and their truths to faith in him, are like so many precious jewels in a king's crown."* If, hereby, a kind of necessity in the marked out succession of Churches is acknowledged, so no one, who holds the maxim, that, above all things, a writer should never contradict himself, would expect Swedenborg to designate all the Christian ages, that have elapsed since the Council of Nice, "as the very night;" "as the * Loc. cit. p. 515. abomination of desolation;""as that Church, wherein nothing spiritual is left remaining ;"*"which in name only is Christian;" or (as the Anglican writer of the preface to the book, from which we have made our extracts, expresses himself), "as the revelation of the mystery of iniquity;" "as the man of sin;" or whatever other predicates may please him. A marvellous expansion, truly, of childhood to youth, to manhood, and to age! After such a confused succession of times and of Churches, Swedenborg fitly follows as the extremest link. In a true developement, the continuation and the end are so connected with the beginning, that not only doth the latter follow the preceding in gentle transitions, but it grows out of it, and is in the same relation to it, as the bud, the blossom, and the fruit, are to the seed. Yet Swedenborgianism doth not grow out of the sequence of historical phenomena, but breaks suddenly in upon them. We have already had occasion to observe, that, according to Swedenborg, the corruption of the Church began at once, at a single stroke, as if by some magical interruption, to the train of thought of all her members. Equally abrupt and unexpected is the rise of his own religious system. He charges the Church existing before him, with having, by the abuse of free-will, abandoned, and never again returned, to the fundamental principles of Christianity; and asserts, at the same time, that it is impossible to attain to them * Loc. cit. p. 512. "That the last time of the Christian Church is the very night, in which the former Churches have sat, is plain from the Lord's prediction," &c. Vol. i. p. 253: "Nothing spiritual is left remaining in it" (the whole Church). † Vol. ii. p. 373: "The former Church being Christian in name only, but not in essence and reality." again, without an intercourse with the spiritual world, -without the knowledge of certain truths, which no man, before him, possessed, because none had been favoured with the like revelations. But, as the revelations were the result of an extraordinary grace of God, and as, in the Church itself, all elements for a true regeneration had been, since the Nicene Council, utterly lost, how could the Swedenborgian Church follow the preceding Churches, in a regular order of developement ? All sects, that had seceded from the Catholic Church, could, in a certain degree, give a plausible justification to their charges against her, inasmuch, as they appealed to Scripture, whereby her regeneration were possible. The censure of the Reformers, indeed, must always be termed incomprehensible, since it presupposed the freewill of those, against whom it was directed; and this faculty the Reformers denied to men, representing the Deity as the exclusive agent in all spiritual concerns, on whom it entirely depended to set aside, as by a magical stroke, all errors, and who, in consequence, was alone obnoxious to any charge, if in His household any thing were amiss. These reproaches, nevertheless, might, to men, who are not wont to reason with consistency, appear well-founded. But Swedenborg boasts that the true spiritual sense of Holy Writ was revealed to him in Heaven only, and, in consequence, quite independently of the ordinary channels, furnished through the original institution of the Church; and he therefore denies to the three preceding periods of Christianity, the utter possibility of possessing, through the then existing media, any sound doctrine whatsoever. And yet he describes the community he founded, as the crown of the Churches following each other "according to order!" Was then the apostacy of the Nicene Council something conformable to order? Was the darkness of the Greek, the Roman Catholic, and the Protestant Churches, founded in the very ordinance of God? In the same way, too, as, according to the theory of our sage, Christ might have appeared in the time of Adam, Noah, and Moses; so he himself, from the destination assigned to him, might have commenced his career in the fourth, fifth, or sixth century of our era. And yet, the succession of the Churches was defined and systematic! Not the slightest reference to final causes can be discovered, in this contradictory view of History, and its result appears totally unworthy of the Deity. But here, we must draw the attention of the reader to a special circumstance. Wherefore had Christ not power enough to stem, by his manifestation, the progress of sin, and to ensure the truth, he had brought to mankind, against the possibility of extinction? Wherefore did the Word, which was uttered from his lips, which was preserved and explained by his spirit, lose, so shortly after his ascension, its world-subduing energy? And wherefore doth it work with might and with victory, and become for ever permanent, only when proclaimed by Swedenborg? We should yet be disposed to think, that when God himself speaks, the Word is at least as lasting, as when a mortal babbles, though to him all mysteries in heaven should have been disclosed! The work of Christ lasted about three hundred years-a short spring-tide-till, at last, Swedenborg converts all into eternal spring! Is not this the most evident blasphemy? Swedenborg is really exalted to be the centre-point of all History, and to hold the place of the true Redeemer; with him, and not with Christ, the golden age returns! § LXXXVI. Concluding Remarks. The translations of Swedenborg's writings find, as we hear, a very great sale in and out of Germany, and the number of his followers daily increases. This we can perfectly understand. The unadorned Gospel, the simplicity of the Church's doctrine, are no longer capable of exciting an age so spiritually enervated, like our own. Truth must be set forth in glaring colours, and represented in gigantic proportions, if we hope to stimulate and stir the souls of this generation. The infinite void and obtuseness of religious feeling in our time, when it cannot grasp spirits by the hand, and see them pass daily before it, is incapable of believing in a higher spiritual world; and the fancy must be startled, by the most terrific images, if the hope of prolonging existence, in a future world, is not entirely to be extinguished. Long enough was the absurd, as well as deplorable endeavour made to banish miracles from the Gospel History; to undermine, with insolent mockery, the belief in the great manifestation of the Son of God; to call in question all living intercourse, between the Creator and the creature; and to inundate nations with the most shallow systems of morality; for these followed in the wake of such anti-Christian efforts. But, the yearning soul of man is not to be satisfied with such idle talk; and when you take from it true miracles, it will then invent false ones. Our age is doomed to witness the desolate spectacle of a most joyless languor, and impotence of the spiritual life, by the side of the most exaggerated and sickly excitement of the same; and if we do not, with a living and spiritual feeling, return to the doctrine of the Church, we shall soon see |