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the glorious character and essential importance of conjugal love. He concluded by urging his young friends to prepare their minds, by the Lord's aid, for this holy state, proving its connection with the universal marriage of goodness and truth.

After a vote of thanks to the President, and the gentlemen to whose labours the meeting was indebted for the excellent arrangements, the meeting concluded with singing and prayer.

The proceedings were considerably enlivened by the introduction of a selection of really excellent vocal and instrumental music, by New Church friends from Manchester and Kersley. The congregational singing was accompanied by the harp and pianoforte, which instruments were also successfully brought into requisition by the introduction of several appropriate duets. A more agreeable meeting has seldom been held, and we are inclined to concur in the general opinion, that this meeting had proved not only the most numerously attended, but the most useful and profitable, under the auspices of the Sunday School Union since its first establishment. Not the least interesting feature was the evident sphere of social harmony; friends met friends, and strangers became friends. From such gatherings, the church has much to hope; they tend to elevate and enlighten the minds of her children, and the oftener her members can meet together for purposes of mutual and general good, the better will it be for all of us.

CORRESPONDENCE ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE NEW CHURCH IN THE DAVENTRY CHRONICLE. Between the Rev. G. O. Bate, Wesleyan Minister, and Mr. J. K. Applebee. It will be gratifying to our readers, as it has been to ourselves, to find so able an advocate of our doctrines in a town where it was not known that anyone favourable to them resided. The fact has, however, been brought most unquestionably before us, in a correspondence between Mr. Applebee and the Rev. George Osborn Bate; in which the former has sustained the cause of the New Church in a manner highly honourable to himself, and one, we doubt not, which will prove highly beneficial to the cause of truth.

In what circumstances the correspon

dence originated, we have not been able to learn, further than that Mr. Bate was the assailant, having affirmed "that Swedenborg added to the Bible as a Rule of Faith;" and moreover revived the exploded slander to which Mr. Wesley gave circulation in his Armenian Magazine, to the effect that Swedenborg, whilst residing with Mr. Brockmer, was attacked with a fever, and in a state of delirium rushed naked into the street, rolled himself in a place called the Gully Hole, and proclaimed himself the Messiah. Mr. Applebee fully meets both the allegation of Swedenborg adding to the Bible, and this scandalous fabrication. On the latter he observes,-"I could have wished, for the sake of the reputation of the great founder of Methodism, that Mr. Bate had abstained from reviving John Wesley's gratuitous slander of the great Swede," and then explains that Mr. Wesley professes to have had his information from Mr. Brockmer, but that when Mr. Hindmarsh waited on this gentleman, "he positively denied the fact, positively declaring that he had never opened his mouth on the subject to Mr. Wesley, nor had he given such account to any other person." Mr. Brockmer added,—“ Swedenborg was never afflicted with any illness, much less with a violent fever at my house; nor did he ever break from me in a delirious state, and run into the street, and there proclaim himself the Messiah, as Mr. Wesley has unjustly represented." With equal success does Mr. Applebee expose the utter groundlessness of Mr. Bate's allegation, that Swedenborg has added to the Bible as a rule of faith, that he denies the Trinity, &c. With respect to Mr. Bate, we regret that truth compels us to characterize his conduct as most disingenuous. On Swedenborg's assumed adding to the Bible rule of faith, he urges that he "could not see how Swedenborg could publish various 'UNKNOWN arcana''seen' by him, or revealed' to him concerning God, &c., without ranking himself with Isaiah and Malachi ;" and that "if such visions do not constitute an addition to Revelation, he does not know what does." Possibly, or rather probably, not. Mr. Bate claims pity for his dulness, and we heartily ac

*M. Sandel, in his eulogium, states that he wa most remarkable for good health, having scarcely or never been known to be sick.-ED.

cord it; for evidently he has no definite idea of what really constitutes revelation, nor in what inspiration consists. We have; and we are indebted for it to the much-maligned Swedenborg. The universal confusion in which everything relating to these subjects has fallen, is one great evidence of the want of a new church to restore light and order, where darkness and disorder reign. But apropos of his disingenuousness. Mr. Bate gives, so we gather from the correspondence, what he styles a "fair specimen of Swedenborg's visions from the Heaven and Hell." Mr. Applebee requests to be informed where it occurs, not having, in hastily glancing over the pages of that work, been able to find any thing that answers to it. Catching at the expression "hastily glancing," Mr. Bate converts it into an admission that Mr. Applebee has never read the book, and on that ground declines to give him the reference ! Here are his own words:" It is better that he should read the treatise carefully through, and consequently that I should not give him the requested page, but set him searching for the passages, which I can assure him and your readers he will find, if his copy be genuine!" Our readers will strongly suspect that Mr. Bate employed the above as a subterfuge to cover his own unscrupulousness.

Another point is the Trinity, which Mr. Bate affirms Swedenborg to deny, a charge which Mr. Applebee scatters to the winds. What is Mr. Bate's reply? "Mr. Applebee knows very well that Swedenborg's doctrine of the Trinity is not that which everyone reading my letter and his would understand by the phrase!" So, then, because Swedenborg does not take the same view of the Trinity as Mr. Bate, he denies it! Such an evasion might be expected in a Jesuit, but is a deep stain on the character of one professing to be a Christian minister, and is a scandal on the office itself. Another instance in which his disingenuousness is shown relates to the tale of the fever circulated by Wesley. In his first letter he merely says that "to a mind equal to the conception of Swedenborg among Augustine, Luther, Calvin, &c., as 'a Colossus among dwarfs,' it may appear credible that John Wesley should in his glorious old age deliberately forge and circulate a lie, which, on Mr. Hindmarsh's authority,

Mr. Applebee dares impute to him!" But this assumption of injured innocence will not serve. Mr. Wesley gives currency to a slander proved to be utterly unfounded. Here is, if Mr. Bate insist on calling it so, "a lie,”—perhaps a "deliberate" one. Mr. Applebee charges it on no one; it is the general impression among us that Mr. Wesley suffered himself to be imposed on. But the falsehood remains notwithstanding, and if Mr. Bate is determined Mr. Wesley's character shall be bound up with it, be it so; we cannot in justice suffer any considerations of his "glorious old age" to stand in the way of vindicating a character of one incomparably greater and better than Mr. Wesley, from a foul and unfounded aspersion. Mr. Applebee most conclusively disposes of Mr. Bate's evasion, asking in conclusion-"Is it more morally wrong in Wesley, on insufficient grounds and without due inquiry, to have given currency to a sad slander, than it is in Mr. Bate, on grounds just as insufficient, coolly to charge me with daring to affix on the glorious old age of John Wesley the stigma of a deliberate falsehood?"

In Mr. Bate's final letter he says "It is clear Mr. Wesley believed what he said." We ask, Who has denied it? "He published his statement," he adds,

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during the lifetime of the parties, and tacitly appealed to them in his account as 'living when he left London in 1782."" Who were the parties? Mr. Brockmer, who denied having ever given utterance to such a report, and Mr. Mathesius, a personal enemy of Swedenborg, who was in a madhouse! having been seized with madness when about to preach. But even Mr. Mathesius professes to have received his information from Mr. Brockmer. This, in Mr. Bate's opinion, strikingly contrasts with Mr. Hindmarsh's statement that "the three other gentlemen," his witnesses, were "since dead." From this it follows, if there be any force in the contrast, that because his witnesses happened to die, what they saw and heard could not be true! Oh, ingenious Mr. Bate! "It is probable (!) (continues this gentleman) that near half a century elapsed between Wesley's and Hindmarsh's conversation with Mr. Brockmer, and possibly (!) that the latter meanwhile may have lost some of the details of it from his memory!!" The result of these "possibilities" and "pro

babilities" is, that it seems pretty certain some one has made a mistake in the matter, which, we apprehend, most of our readers will admit. But this argument, if it proves anything, proves too much. "The charge against Swedenborg of mental derangement is built upon circumstances alleged to have occurred forty years before the charge was brought forward, and which had never been heard of in the whole of the intermediate period. So that the probabilities and possibilities are equally in favour of Mr. Wesley "having meanwhile lost some of the details of it from his memory." But why, we demand to be informed, was this charge suffered to stand over during the life of Swedenborg, and only preferred when he could not answer for himself? From which side soever it is approached, it bears all the marks of fabrication.

We beg Mr. Applebee to accept our thanks and congratulations for his successful defence of the church. We regret our space will not admit of transferring the correspondence into our pages, whilst it did not seem possible to do justice to it by merely making extracts. There is one point, that of Swedenborg's alleged insanity (of which Mr. Bate merely says it "was mysterious, but not incredible on psychological grounds "-what these are, however, we are not informed), so well met by our friend, that we cannot forego the pleasure of extracting it; " Mr. B. says that 'Swedenborg's insanity is mysterious, but not incredible on psychological grounds.' I wish he would condescend to inform me on what 'psychological grounds' it may be made to appear credible. Shakespere furnishes us with the truest test of insanity, a test recognized by all who have had experience in the phenomena of mental disorder'It is not madness

That I have uttered; bring me to the test,
And I the matter will reword:
Which madness

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perfectly sane men that ever blessed it."

For the rest, Mr. Bate appears any. thing but satisfied with the result. In a letter to the editor he complains that he has been permitted to be " bullied;" and that "if gratuitous lecturers are to be rewarded as he has been in this case, such friends are likely to become few." We can only add, that where it refers to those who, like Mr. Bate, deal in gratuitous slander, the fewer the better.

THE PATRIOT NEWSPAPER AND SWEDEN

BORG.

The great pressure of miscellaneous and other matter in the pages of the Repository has invariably led to the standing over of several subjects beyond the date when they should have appeared. In our last number, we brought up considerable portion of these arrears; and hope, ere long, to bring all up to the current date.

Among the subjects which have thus stood in abeyance, is a notice of Swedenborg, in the Patriot, a newspaper in the interests of Independency. The occasion of the remarks in question was a brief review of Mr. Clissold's excellent reply to the articles of Mr. Bennett, in the Old Church Porch, and appeared in the Patriot of March 5th; and the remarks themselves are such as might be anticipated from a respectable journal, the organ of the pseudo-evangelism of the orthodox Nonconformity. There is an absence of the gross abuse which formerly characterised notices of Swedenborg and his doctrines in the public prints; and in the article before us, several admissions of an indirectly favourable nature. Take the following as an example:-"Now, it is quite impossible to find a variation of Christianity which contains nothing true. Most of them contain much that is true, and some of them give prominence to doctrines and principles which others have too much neglected. It is so with Swedenborgianism. It contains much that is true, and some things, perhaps, which other communities have not given due prominence to," The reviewer, however, "believes that all its truths are found in other systems, and most of them in a purer form." He does not, however, inform his readers what these truths are, or what the systems are in which they are to be found. From his remark on our "daring ambition" in attempting

to unlock the very constitution of the Trinity, we conclude the subject of the Godhead is not one. The writer thinks "too much weight has been allowed to the circumstance that he (Swedenborg) was addicted to literature, science, and philosophy;" and admits that "without doubt his attainments were considerable (!) and the range of his understanding beyond that of many. But this (he contends) proves nothing in regard to his spiritual insight. * * * We are told (he adds) that his moral endowments were of the highest order; and that he was a most spiritually-minded man. Admitted; but this (he says) is no proof of that supernatural perception to which he lays claim, and upon which is based the demand that we receive him as a prophet, yea, and more than a prophet." Had the writer of these remarks possessed the most elementary acquaintance with the principles of the New Church, he would have known that great as were the attainments of Swedenborg (which, notwithstanding his "faint praise" of them as being "considerable," burst with a blaze that astonished the scientific world when, a few years since, his philosophical works were arrayed in an English dress, and wrung from this egotistic age the confession, that though he wrote a century prior, in many points he was a century in advance of the current philosophy), no greater weight has been claimed for his attainments than learning and research ever command. But at the time it is admitted that these "prove nothing in regard to his spiritual insight," it ought not to be kept out of view that a welldefined element underlies the whole of his deductions, shewing that he never for a moment lost sight of the Great First Cause. Much of the philosophy of this age, though elaborated by eminently pious men, may be designated "godless." The agencies most prominently brought to view in geology are mechanical, the action of water, the abrasion of the rocks, the debris of organic substances, &c., even the phenomena of life, are resolved into chemical affinities and the results of chemical agencies, in which, though the operation of God is not denied, it is nevertheless not seen. Swedenborg's philosophy is the opposite to this. Led by him, the universe is full of God, and the human organism replete with spirit. Still it is

not on this ground that Swedenborg's teachings are accepted, but solely on their agreement with the Law and Testimony.

But where, we would ask, has the editor learned that Swedenborg claims to be "a prophet, yea, and more than a prophet"? In what part of his writings does he lay claim to such a distinction, or to anything like inspiration? His teachings simply propound the genuine doctrines and internal signification of the Scriptures, which are, he repeats again and again, to be rationally seen and accepted on purely rational grounds; and the authority they wield over those who accept them, is the authority resulting from the rational conviction that they are true.

The statement of the reviewer on this point is therefore contradicted by the experience of every intelligent member of our church.

We cannot follow the Patriot through all its strictures, and indeed if our space would admit of it, it would be a waste of time to grapple with objections so shadowy and intangible as many of them

are.

*

*

One charge is that we make Swedenborg infallible. But the reviewer shall speak for himself:-" The pretensions of this New Church are such as no other has made. Even the Romish church has not pronounced formally the infallibility of the Pope, but this New Church has set up Emanuel Swedenborg as the infallible expounder of nature, Providence, grace, the written Word, and all things." How under these conditions private judgment can exist, the Patriot does not understand:-"We do not see how, in such a state of things, private judgment can find room." This very position manifests that such people are in a state of intellectual thraldom which is deplorable, and from our hearts we pity them!" With every wish to appreciate the magnanimity of the writer, we must decline his proffered pity as needless. We know our position much better than he. No one among us ever dreams of holding Swedenborg to be infallible, any more than the mathematician holds the personal infallibility of Euclid. We accept the teachings of the former, as the geometrician accepts those of the latter,-because we see them to be true. The latter, according to the Patriot's mode of judging, must find equally little room for private judgment, and ought to be equal objects of the

heartfelt pity of its reviewer, as being "in a state of thraldom [equally] deplorable."

The writer, however, admits that 66 some among [us] may be clever, acute, ingenious, and subtle, may be powerful as declaimers, and formidable as disputants," and he "believes" also "that there are excellent, amiable, and accomplished men in this communion." Do men, we would ask, gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? If there are men among us characterized by intellectual attainments and vigour, and spiritual graces and excellence of so high an order, how, we would ask, can we be the pitiable imbeciles we are represented? Our critic lays himself open to criticism for his inconsistencies. We hold the criterion supplied by our Lord the more reliable-"A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit; NEITHER (mark this neither) CAN a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit: BY THEIR FRUITS SHALL YE KNOW THEM. The excellences the writer has candidly accorded to us, are the legitimate and necessary results of the truths he controverts.

The limits of this article have prevented any reference to his charge against us of "refined materialism." The least educated amongst us will smile at being told that "between their understanding and God's truth the mind of Swedenborg is interposed, and that between their conscience and God the authority of Swedenborg intervenes." But the climax of absurdity is, for one who regards everything supernatural, from the trinity to the soul, as enveloped in so great a mystery that it is presumption for the understanding to dream of glancing at them, and that reason must implicitly bow to faith-for one who has "Mystery" inscribed on all he believes to give utterance to such language as the following:-" Now, all those who prefer mystery to light, allegory to plain truth, human pretence to Divine right, vassalage to liberty, and leading strings to the strength which God gives, may find what they like in the New Church"! Such, then, are our censors. If the Patriot thinks to stem the tide of the New Church truth, which has set in, he will be much deceived. The waters of the sanctuary have already increased till they cover the ankles; gradually they are rising to the knees, and they will go on deepening till like "waters of swimming" they bear down all opposition, and carry

life and health to the remotest bounds of humanity.

Obituary.

Departed this life, at Frankfort, America, Dec. 22, 1858, Mr. Edward Roberts, aged 52. Mr. Roberts embraced the doctrines of the New Jerusalem upwards of 30 years ago, and joined the Salford Society; from which time (except a short period during which he resided at Radcliffe Bridge) he was an active member and a teacher in the Sundayschool until 1848, when he emigrated and went to America, and settled at Frankfort, where he lived until his death, which was caused by a fall from a scaffold 30 feet high; the main support of which having given way, he, together with his partner and another, fell with the scaffold, December 18th. Mr. Roberts falling directly under the structure, the timbers fell upon him and fearfully injured him. He was removed to his home in a state of insensibility. He was, however, on the following day restored to a state of consciousness, and found himself surrounded by his family; which was to them, even under that calamitous circumstance, & source of comfort. He lingered in dreadful pain until the 22nd, when death released him from his sufferings. He has left a wife, in delicate health, two sons, and five daughters to lament their bereavement; the youngest is nine years old. The funeral took place at the Rocky Hill Cemetery, near Frankfort, and the service was performed by the Rev. James Seddon.

S.

Departed this life, at her residence at Fulham, London, February 23rd, 1859, Mrs. Pearce, in her 64th year. She was one of the early members of the Bath Society, and distinguished herself by her zealous love for the new truths, and by collecting a large sum towards building the present edifice. She has left a family of four sons and one daughter. The sons are distributed through America, Africa, and the East Indies. The youngest son, who has been for some years at the latter place, was in the midst, and through the whole, of the late fearful and horrid war; but although thousands fell around him, and he was besmeared with others' blood, yet he escaped unhurt. The whole of the family contributed to the comfort of their mother through the many years of her declining life. She was early left a widow, and

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