Ib. p. 315.
"Can he be a sane man who records the subsequent reverie as matter of fact? The Baron informs us, that on a certain night a man appeared to him in the midst of a strong shining light, and said, I am God the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer; I have chosen thee to explain to men the interior and spiritual sense of the Sacred Writings: I will dictate to thee what thou oughtest to write? From this period, the Baron relates he was so illumined, as to behold, in the clearest manner, what passed in the spiritual world, and that he could converse with angels and spirits as with men," &c.
I remember no such passage as this in Swedenborg's works. Indeed it is virtually contradicted by their whole tenor. Swedenborg asserts himself to relate
visa et audita
,—his own experience, as a traveller and visitor of the spiritual world,—not the words of another as a mere
amanuensis
. But altogether this Gulielmus must be a silly Billy.
Ib. p. 321.