“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.
This faith is in God the Saviour Jesus Christ, and in its simple form is as follows: 1. That there is One God, in whom is a Divine Trinity, and that He is the Lord Jesus Christ. 2. That saving faith is to believe in Him. 3. That evils ought to be shunned, because they are of the devil and from the devil. 4. That good works ought to be done, because they are of God and from God. 5. That they ought to be done by man as of himself, but with a belief that they are from the Lord, operating in him and by him.
The faith of the present day has separated religion from the Church, since religion consists in the acknowledgment of One God, and in the worship of Him from faith grounded in charity; but the faith of the present Church cannot be conjoined with charity, and produce any fruits which are good works, because imputation supplies everything, remits guilt, justifies, sanctifies, regenerates; imparts the life of heaven, and thus salvation; and all this freely, without any works of man. In this case, what is charity, which ought to be united with faith, but something vain and superfluous, and a mere addition and supplement to imputation, and justification, to which, nevertheless, it adds no weight or value?
From this faith results a worship of the mouth and not of the life. Now the Lord accepts the worship of the mouth in proportion as it proceeds from the worship of the life.
The doctrine of the present Church is interwoven with many paradoxes, which are to be embraced by faith. Therefore its tenets gain admission into the memory only, and not at all into the understanding, which is superior to the memory, but merely into confirmations below it. Thus the tenets of the present Church cannot be learned or retained without great difficulty, nor can they be preached or taught without using great care and caution to conceal their nakedness, because sound reason neither discerns nor perceives them.
The doctrine of the faith of the present Church ascribes to God human passions and infirmities; as, that He beheld man from anger, that He required to be reconciled, that He is reconciled through the love He bore towards the Son, and by His intercession; and that He required to be appeased by the sight of His Son’s sufferings, and thus to be brought back to mercy; and that He imputes the righteousness of His Son to an unrighteous man who supplicates it from faith alone; and that thus from an enemy He makes him a friend, and from a child of wrath a child of grace:—all which dogmas are the opposite of the truth, and repulsive to every wise man.
The faith of the present Church has produced monstrous births; for instance, instantaneous salvation by an immediate act of mercy; predestination; the notion that God has no respect unto the actions of men, but unto faith alone; that there is no connection between charity and faith; that man in conversion is like a stock; with many more heresies of the same kind; likewise concerning the sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Supper, as to the advantages reasonably to be expected from them, when considered according to the doctrine of justification by faith alone; as also with regard to the person of Christ: and that heresies, from the first ages to the present day, have sprung up from no other source than from the doctrine founded on the idea of three Divine Persons or Gods.
The last state of the present church, when it is at an end, is meant by the consummation of the age, and the coming of the Lord at that period. Matt. xxiv. 3.
The infestation from falses, and thence the consummation of every truth, or the desolation which at this day prevails in the Christian Churches, is meant by the great affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the world, nor ever shall be: Matt. xxiv. 21: and that there would be neither love nor faith, nor the knowledge of good and truth, in the last time of the Christian Church, is understood by these words in the same chapter of Matthew: “After the affliction of those days, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken,” verse 29.
They who are in the present justifying faith, are meant by the he-goats in Daniel and Matthew; and they who have confirmed themselves therein, are meant in the Apocalypse by the dragon and his two beasts, and by the locusts; and this same faith, when confirmed, is there meant by the great city which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where the two witnesses were slain; as also by the pit of the abyss, whence the locusts issued.
Unless a New Church be established by the Lord, no one can be saved. This is meant by these words: “Unless those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved.” Matt. xxiv. 22. The reason why no flesh could be saved, unless those days should be shortened, is, because the faith of the present Church is founded on the idea of three Gods, and with this idea no one can enter heaven. Not that all who are believers in the doctrine of a tripersonal God are lost; but that, unless a New Church were provided by the Lord, and spiritual truth revealed, man, wanting truth, could never become regenerate, could never enter heaven, and thus the end of his creation would be defeated. In spite, however, of false doctrine, men are saved by the laying hold, as it were, of the truths leading to a good life, which exist in the most corrupt faiths, and goodness always contains an internal acknowledgment and love of truth, although false doctrine may fill the memory. Yet it is true, nevertheless, that false doctrine perverts, discourages, and in the end destroys all inclinations to live well. For this reason, then, the First Christian Church has come to its end, or has been consummated; and the Lord is raising up a New Church, endowed with truth capable of leading the world in the way of life, and to heaven.
The opening and rejection of the tenets of the faith of the present Church, and the revelation and reception of the tenets of the faith of the New Church, is meant by these words in the Apocalypse:—“He that sat upon the throne said, Behold I make all things new; and He said unto me, Write; for these words are true and faithful.” xxi. 5. The New Church about to be established by the Lord, is the New Jerusalem, treated of in chapters xxi. and xxii., which is there called the Bride and the Wife of the Lamb.
Such, briefly expressed, are the heads or leading ideas of the little work, “A Brief Exposition of the Doctrines of the New Church,” a treatise which, as Wilkinson truly remarks, “is unequaled among Swedenborg’s works for its destructive logic.”
“The Intercourse Between the Soul and the Body,” is a small treatise designed to illustrate a subject which has puzzled many minds from time immemorial. Various have been the theories of philosophers on this subject; but few could satisfy the intelligent mind, or explain the varied phenomena of being. Swedenborg, in many of his previous works, had, with greater or less fullness, explained the nature of the soul’s union with the body, and this treatise is, to some extent, but a repetition of what he had elsewhere written,—cleared, however, from extraneous matter.
His view of the subject is simple and intelligible, as is all truth. The soul of man is a spiritual substance, of the same form as his body; transfusing all the body’s tissues, and wearing the body as a garment, even as the body wears its clothes. The body lives from the soul. In itself, the body is dead and without sensation, as is evident when the man leaves it at death; it then returns to its inorganic elements. As the body is diseased or injured, the soul is more or less deprived of its power of action in the natural world, but the soul itself is uninjured. We see an illustration of this in the use of spectacles. Man’s external organ of sight is defective, and he cannot see objects distinctly. Glasses are put before his eyes, and he sees as well as ever. Now it is certain the glasses in themselves do not restore his sight. They merely complete the defective organ, and the eye of the spiritual man uses them as a means to look forth into the material world. Observation and meditation will supply a multitude of confirmations of this doctrine of the spiritual body animating and transfusing the material.
At death the spiritual body lays down the material, and makes its appearance in its higher sphere. Whether it is beautiful or deformed, depends upon the man’s conduct on earth. If the soul has loved goodness and truth, it is a beautiful human form, and increases in grace and loveliness to eternity in heaven; if, on the other hand, it has lived in evil and hated truth, it is deformed and hideous, and finds its place in hell, the abode of all that is ugly and abominable.
But from this it is not to be concluded that the soul has life in itself. Like the body, it also is dead, and is only a form receptive of life from the One Only Infinite Life, in whom the whole universe lives, moves, and has its being,—the Lord. The material body is proximately sustained by the light and heat of the material sun. The spiritual body of man is sustained by the light and heat of the spiritual Sun, which is the circumambient sphere of the Divine Love and Wisdom. From this spiritual Sun, our natural sun exists, even as our material bodies live from our spiritual bodies. But all alike exist and subsist from the Lord alone.
Such, in a few words, is the leading idea of this little treatise. For the details, the charming confirmation and the able and simple refutation of the doctrines of Leibnitz and other philosophers, who have treated on the same subject, we can only refer to the book itself. We append the concluding paragraph of the treatise, as a delightful specimen of spiritual analogy:—
“I was once asked, how I, who was previously a philosopher, became a theologian; and I answered, ‘In the same manner that fishermen became the disciples and apostles of the Lord: and that I also from my youth had been a spiritual fisherman.’ On this, he asked, ‘What is a spiritual fisherman?’ I replied,—‘A fisherman, in the spiritual sense of the Word, signifies a man who investigates and teaches natural truths, and afterwards spiritual truths in a rational manner.’ On his inquiring, ‘How is this demonstrated?’ I said, ‘From these passages of the Word: ‘And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the rivers shall be wasted and dried up. The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast a hook into the brook shall lament.’ Isaiah xix. 5, 8. And in another place it is said, respecting the sea, whose waters were healed, ‘The fishers shall stand upon it, from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be present to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many.’ Ezekiel xlvii. 10. And in another place, ‘Behold I will send for many fishers, saith Jehovah, and they shall fish them.’ Jeremiah xvi. 16. Hence it is evident why the Lord chose fishermen for his disciples, and said, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men;’ Matthew iv. 18, 19; Mark i. 16, 17; and why he said to Peter after he had caught a multitude of fishes, ‘Henceforth thou shalt catch men.’ Luke v. 9, 10. I afterwards demonstrated the origin of this signification of fishermen from the Apocalypse Revealed; namely, that since water signifies natural truths, as does also a river, a fish signifies those who are in possession of natural truths; and thence fishermen, those who investigate and teach truth. On hearing this, my interrogator said, ‘Now I can understand why the Lord called and chose fishermen to be his disciples; and therefore I do not wonder that he has also chosen you, since, as you have observed, you were from early youth a fisherman in a spiritual sense, that is, an investigator of natural truths; and the reason that you are now become an investigator of spiritual truths, is because they are founded in the former.’ To this he added, being a man of reason, that ‘the Lord alone knows who is the proper person to apprehend and teach the truths of His New Church, whether one of the primates, or one of their domestic servants. Besides,’ he continued, ‘what Christian theologian does not study philosophy in the schools, before he is inaugurated a theologian.’ At length he said, ‘Since you are become a theologian, explain what is your theology.’ I answered, ‘These are its two principles, God is one, and there is a conjunction of charity and faith.’ To which he replied, ‘Who denies these principles?’ I rejoined, ‘The theology of the present day, when interiorly examined.’”