“I have had the honor of being frequently admitted to Swedenborg’s company, when in London, and to converse with him on various points of learning, and I will venture to affirm that there are no parts of mathematical, philosophical, or medical knowledge, nay, I believe I might justly say, of human literature, to which he is in the least a stranger; yet so totally insensible is he of his own merit, that I am confident he does not know that he has any; and as he himself somewhere says of the angels, he always turns his head away on the slightest encomium.”
Swedenborg’s stay in England at this time does not seem to have been longer than sufficed for the transaction of his business; for in September, 1769, he sailed for Stockholm, arriving there at the beginning of October. But we must now suspend the narrative of his life to offer a few remarks on his little works,—“A Brief Exposition of the Doctrine of the New Church,” and “The Intercourse Between the Soul and the Body.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
“Brief Exposition of the Doctrines of the New Church,” and “The Intercourse between the Soul and the Body.”
“The Brief Exposition of the Doctrines of the New Church” is an exposition effected by means of comparisons between the doctrines of the New Church and those of Catholics and Protestants. The work is avowedly only a sketch, and the precursor of a larger book—“The True Christian Religion”—a work of some years, which will shortly demand our attention. The Catholic doctrinals are taken from the records of the Council of Trent; and the Protestant from the Formula Concordiæ, composed by persons attached to the Augsburg Confession. The disagreements between the tenets of the Old and New Churches are considered under twenty-five Articles, the heads of which we will condense and present to the reader.
The Churches which, by the Reformation, separated themselves from the Roman Catholic Church, differ in various points of doctrine; but they all agree in the Articles concerning a Trinity of Persons in the Godhead, original sin from Adam, imputation of the merit of Christ, and justification by faith alone. The Roman Catholics, before the Reformation, held and taught exactly the same things as the Reformed did after it, in respect to these points; only with this difference, that they conjoined faith with charity or good works.
The leading Reformers, Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin, retained all the tenets concerning a Trinity of Persons in the Godhead, original sin, imputation of the merits of Christ, and justification by faith, just as they were, and had been, among the Roman Catholics; but they separated charity or good works from that faith, and declared at the same time that they were not of a saving efficacy, with a view to be totally severed from the Roman Catholics as to the very essentials of the Church, which are faith and charity. Nevertheless the leading Reformers adjoined good works, and even conjoined them to their faith, but in man as a passive subject; whereas the Roman Catholics conjoin them in man as an active subject; and notwithstanding this, there is actually a conformity between the one and the other as to faith, works, and merit.
The whole system of theology in the Christian World, at this day, is founded on an idea of three Gods, arising from the doctrine of a Trinity of Persons, and when this doctrine is rejected, then all the tenets of the aforesaid theology fall to pieces. The truth of this must be apparent to every one. The Doctrine of a Trinity of Persons in the Divine Being, is the key-stone of Roman Catholic and Protestant theology. If this Doctrine be false, the whole structure totters to its fall.
When the faith in three Gods is rejected, then it is possible to receive the true and saving faith, which is a faith in One God, united with good works.