mediately after dissolution, man rises in a spiritual body, contained in his material frame. He inculcated the doctrine of man's communion with invisible beings; of the upright, with angels; of the depraved, with spirits of darkness. All Scriptural passages, describing the destruction of the world by fire, or painting the last judgment, are referred by him, agreeably to the sciences of correspondences, to the destruction of the existing Christian church, in the year 1757: from which date is to be reckoned the second advent of our Lord, and the commencement of a higher Christian church, described in the Revelations as the New Jerusalem; or as the new heaven, and a new earth.

The pretensions of Swedenborg and of many among his followers to visit heaven ad libitum, and to hold conversations with angels, may be placed on a level with the fancies of the madman in Horace;

Fuit haud ignobilis Argis,

Qui se credebat miros audire tragœdos,

In vacuo lætus sessor, plausorque theatro.

The notion of this mystic respecting the consolidation of the Trinity, has been already answered in our replies to the Unitarians and Moravians. It cannot solve the account of the transfiguration; nor those circumstances which

took place in the heavens at the baptism of Jesus by John; where the three Persons in the Godhead distinctly manifested themselves in their several and separate capacities. It is totally incompetent to explain the prayers offered by Christ to his Father, whom he often addresses, as "his Father who is in heaven." All these passages are at variance with the notion of that fulness of the Godhead united to the man Jesus, which would justify an exclusive worship offered to the Son.

To compare the Trinity, to body, soul, and operation, as uniting in one man, is to elucidate an incomprehensible mystery by comprehensible things; it is to confound Persons, and to divide the substance: the Father is God and the Son is God; but the body is not man, and the soul is not man. With regard to operation in man, as compared to the Holy Ghost, this destroys the Trinity, by making that third distinct Person lose his personality and become an influence.

Not less false are Swedenborg's ideas of atonement, as not pacifying an offended God, but fitting man for the reception of his mercy. They are contradicted by the whole system of Jewish sacrifices, which were types of Christ, our passover sacrificed for us, and the sprinkling of whose blood averts the wrath of God. In fact, "being by nature born in sin, we are

by nature the children of wrath;" and therefore, when we become children of grace by entrance into that new covenant which was sealed with the blood of Christ, a manifest change is wrought in the disposition of God towards us. As to the renewal of the powers of man, and the change in his moral dispositions, these certainly follow among the consequences of redemption; but its first effect is to propitiate an offended God, and to place sinners on a footing of acceptableness instead of condemnation. The mental renewal is the operation of the Spirit of God, seconded by human co-operation; his Spirit bearing witness with our spirits. (Romans, viii. 16.) But this is not coextensive with the benefits of redemption; for all are redeemed, and might be saved; but they only are truly saved through lively faith, who embrace the gift of redemption.

On the fanciful and uncertain doctrine of correspondences, and on the errors to which it leads, we refer to what has already been advanced in reply to the Hutchinsonians.

By the Swenden borgians the Epistles are Swendenborgians termed private letters, and their authority is denied in the canon of Scripture: but St. Peter positively asserts the Epistles of St. Paul to be Scriptural, even when he is warning the world against an improper use of some things contained in them, hard to be understood: "as

also in his epistles, which they that are unlearned wrest, as they do THE OTHER SCRIPTURES, to their own destruction." (2 Peter, xv. 16.) These Epistles were Scriptures, then, in the same sense as the Gospels were. Had they not been so, it would have better answered St. Peter's purpose, to have at once denied their inspi

ration.

In the promise of the Comforter, who was to impart truths which could not, at the close of our Lord's brief ministry, be received by the weak minds of the disciples; who was to wean them from milk, to supply strong meat, and to guide auto all truth; Christ directly referred to the inspiration and the importance of the Apostolic teaching and writing; while he stamped the authority of the Epistles which his chosen Apostles should indite. (John, xvi. 12, 13. Hebrews, v. 14.)

In one passage, St. Paul says, "I speak as a man;" a man, whose unaided judgment confesses its fallibility. This, then, is a note of exception to his general speaking. His general speaking is to be understood in the sense of another passage: "Yet not I, but the Holy Ghost which is in me." (Romans, iii. 5. 1 Cor. xv. 10.)

But the doctrine which represents the day of judgment as a figure more than a fact; and the descriptions of the heavens passing away with a great noise, while the Son of Man

and great glory, as fulfilled in 1758 by the raving productions of Emmanuel Swedenborg, surpasses all the others in nonsense, presumption, and blasphemy.

cometh in the clouds with power

It is not a fact that the present Christian church is at an end. It continues to this day. Do the disciples of Swedenborg recollect the passages, "Enter into the joy of your Lord:"and, "Depart from me, ye cursed:"-" These shall go away into everlasting life;"-" but the wicked into eternal punishment?" How, then, can it be pretended that the day of fulfilment is already past? It is said in the Scriptures, that the second advent of our Lord shall not happen, until the knowledge of his religion cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea; but many parts of the earth are still in the darkness of paganism. It is again said, that one jot shall not pass, nor one tittle from the word of God, until all be fulfilled; but all is not fulfilled. There yet, therefore, remaineth a rest for the people of God; who thus have not yet entered, but SEEK a country: while to the wicked, there yet remaineth a certain fearful looking for (so far are they from the preterition) of judgment. (Hab. ii. 14. Matt. v. 18. Heb. iv. 9. Heb. xi. 14; and xiii. 14. Heb. x. 27.)