so different. And while we seek the mollia tempora fandi, we do not indiscriminately press the matter of religion on the attention of all unbelievers, or at all times. Such of us as have leisure to devote to literary pursuits, or inquiry into truth, always seek to unite therewith some useful occupation. There is a good deal of technical phraseology in the works of our author, which sounds strange to a novice; but its meaning is easily learnt, and it is used in a steadfast sense.

We are some

times asked whether we ascribe' Infallibility' to Swedenborg ?-As a personal attribute-No. We believe him to have been sound in his memory and other faculties: a competent and credible witness of things seen and heard:' that being enlightened for the purpose as no other man was ever before, he could rationally perceive the truths contained in the Word of the Lord, and that the inferences drawn by him therefrom are logically correct: and that he has embodied these in his various writings with such simple perspicuity, that a candid reader, under the guidance of his general doctrine, need never mistake his meaning. And thus it was, as we believe, that he was Providentially guarded from Error.' Lastly, we do not look upon death as in itself so terrible an event, and think that no Christian should. Neither do we indulge in passionate grief for our departed friends, our natural feeling for their loss being generally mitigated by our concep tions of divine truth and mercy, and of the nature of the other life. If any of these 'peculiarities' are thought so offensive as to be without precedent or pretence of reason, we must bear the imputation with what grace we may.

In reviewing what we have written, we find we have treated with freedom, but we hope with fairness, the principles of other professed followers of our Lord; sure we are without any feelings of hostility to individuals who have held and still hold them for many of whom we entertain high respect. It is with us a principle to recognise and honor goodness wherever we meet with it; though we cannot but regret that, in this our age, it is so often allied to or accompanied by so much error. And this feeling we are bound to cherish

even though it be not reciprocated. From our own position we survey the state of the world, intellectual, political, and religious, and think we see in all those departments marked and strong tendencies towards a better order of things. Magnus ab integro sec lorum nascitur ordo. And though we live in a period of transition: the anxiety, of which all must partake at such a season, is alleviated in our case by the assurance that He who is at the helm, having eternal and glorious ends in view, orders or permits only such events as can be converted to their promotion. Now that other systems are breaking up around us, we would most respectfully invite our countrymen to give this a fair consideration, and not to condemn it unheard or from the representations of its enemies alone. Fraud, violence, menace, fashion, the favor of princes, diplomacy, have all tried in vain to reunite Protestants on some one basis; wrangling polemics and verbal critics have succeeded as little. In our conscience we believe that in this confusion worse confounded, none but the Author of our faith could tell us what it is; and this we doubt not he has done through a qualified agent. He who receives 'The True Christian Religion,' as here delineated, cannot but smile at the pretensions of Rome. For her expositions. or superintendence he can have no possible use; and the brutum fulmen' of her anathema will fall harmless at his feet.

Such is the bread which we have been invited to cast upon the waters. We dismiss it to the care of Providence, and the justice of our readers. Should they desire a more full and formal sketch of doctrine than the rapid outline of the text, we subjoin the Articles of Faith as set forth by the English Conference and adopted by the Church in America.

Swedenborg tells us in his Treatise on Divine Providence, (No. 259.) There are three essentials of the Church, the acknowledgment of the Divine of the Lord, the acknowledgment of the sanctity of the Word, and the life which is called charity; according to the life, which is charity, every man has faith; from the Word is

the knowledge of what life must be; and from the Lord is reformation and salvation. If these three had been as the essentials of the Church, intellectual dissensions would not have divided, but only varied it, as the light varies the colors in beautiful objects, and as various diadems make the beauty in a king's crown.'

He has also prefixed the following brief creed to his True Christian Religion.' The Faith of the New Heaven and the New Church, in the particular Form, is this: That Jehovah God is Love itself and Wisdom itself, or that he is Good itself and Truth itself: and that He, as to Divine Truth, which is the Word, and which was God with God, descended and assumed the Human, to the end that He might reduce to order all things which were in heaven, and all things which were in hell, and all things which were in the Church; since, at that time, the power of hell prevailed over the power of heaven, and, upon earth, the power of evil over the power of good, and thence a total damnation stood before the door and threatened. This impending damnation Jehovah God removed by means of his Human, which was Divine Truth, and thus He redeemed angels and men; and afterwards He united, in his Human, Divine Truth with Divine Good, or Divine Wisdom with Divine Love, and thus, together with and in his glorified Human, returned into his Divine, in which He was from eternity. These things are meant by this passage in John, The Word was with God, and the Word was God; and the Word became flesh,' i. 1, 14; and in the same, I proceeded from the Father, and came into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father,' xvi. 28: and also by this, We know that the Son of God hath come, and given us understanding, that we might know the True; and we are in the True, in his Son Jesus Christ: This is the true God and eternal Life,' 1 John v. 20, 21. From these it is manifest that, without the coming of the Lord into the world, no one could have been saved. It is similar at this day: wherefore, unless the Lord should again come into the world, in Divine Truth, no one can be saved.

The particulars of the faith, on the

part of man, are, 1. That God is One, in whom is a Divine Trinity, and that He is the Lord God the Saviour Jesus Christ. 2. That saving faith is to believe in Him. 3. That evils should not be done, because they are of the devil, and from the devil. 4. That good should be done, because they are of God, and from God. 5. And that these should be done by man as from himself; but that it should be believed, that they are from the Lord, with him and through him. The two first are of faith, the two next are of charity, and the fifth is of the conjunction of charity and faith, thus of the Lord and man.'

THE ARTICLES THEMSELVES ARE AS FOLLOWS:

1. That Jehovah God, the Creator and Preserver of heaven and earth, is Love Itself, and Wisdom Itself, or Good Itself, and Truth Itself: That he is One both in Essence and in Person, in whom, nevertheless, is the Divine Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which are the essential Divinity, the Divine Humanity, and the Divine Proceeding, answering to the soul, the body, and the operative energy in man: And that the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is that God.

6

2. That Jehovah God himself descended from heaven, as Divine Truth, which is the Word, and took upon him Human Nature for the purpose of removing from man the powers of hell, and restoring to order all things in the Spiritual world, and all things in the Church: That he removed from man the powers of hell, by combats against and victories over them, in which consisted the great work of Redemption: That by the same acts, which were his temptations, the last of which was the passion of the cross, he united, in his Humanity, Divine Truth to Divine Good, or Divine Wisdom to Divine Love, and so returned into his Divinity in which he was from eternity, together with, and in, his Glorified Humanity; whence he for ever keeps the infernal powers in subjection to himself: And that all who believe in him, with the understanding, from the heart, and live accordingly, will be saved.

3. That the sacred Scripture, or Word

of God, is Divine Truth Itself; containing a Spiritual sense heretofore unknown, whence it is divinely inspired and holy in every syllable; as well as a literal sense, which is the basis of its spiritual sense, and in which Divine Truth is in its fulness, its sanctity, and its power: thus that it is accommodated to the apprehension both of angels and men: That the spiritual and natural senses are united, by correspondences, like soul and body, every natural expression and image answering to, and including a spiritual and divine idea: And thus that the Word is the medium of communication with heaven, and of conjunction with the Lord.

4. That the government of the Lord's Divine Love and Wisdom is the Divine Providence; which is universal, exercised according to certain fixed laws of Order, and extending to the minutest particulars of the life of all men, both of the good and of the evil: That in all its operations it has respect to what is infinite and eternal, and makes no account of things transitory but as they are subservient to eternal ends; thus, that it mainly consists with man, in the connection of things temporal with things eternal; for that the continual aim of the Lord, by his Divine Providence, is to join man to himself, and himself to man, that he may be able to give him the felicities of eternal life: And that the laws of permission are also laws of the Divine Providence; since evil cannot be prevented without destroying the nature of man as an accountable agent; and because, also, it cannot be removed unless it be known, and cannot be known unless it appear: Thus, that no evil is permitted but to prevent a greater; and all is overruled by the Lord's Divine Providence, for the greatest possible good.

5. That man is not life, but is only a recipient of life from the Lord, who, as he is Love Itself, and Wisdom Itself, is also Life Itself; which life is communicated by influx to all in the spiritual world, whether belonging to heaven or to hell, and to all in the natural world; but is received differently by every one, according to his quality and consequent state of reception.

6. That man, during his abode in the world, is, as to his spirit, in the midst between heaven and hell, acted upon by in

fluences from both, and thus is kept in a state of spiritual equilibrium between good and evil; in consequence of which he enjoys free-will, or freedom of choice, in spiritual things as well as in natural, and possesses the capacity of either turning himself to the Lord and his kingdom, or turning himself away from the Lord, and connecting himself with the kingdom of darkness: And that, unless man had such freedom of choice, the Word would be of no use, the Church would be a mere name, man would possess nothing by virtue of which he could be conjoined to the Lord, and the cause of evil would be chargeable on God himself.

7. That man at this day is born into evil of all kinds, or with tendencies towards it: That, therefore, in order to his entering the kingdom of heaven, he must be regenerated or created anew; which great work is effected in a progressive manner, by the Lord alone, by charity and faith as mediums, during man's cooperation: That as all men are redeemed, all are capable of being regenerated and consequently saved, every one according to his state: And that the regenerated man is in communion with the angels of hea ven, and the unregenerate with the spirits of hell: But that no one is condemned for hereditary evil, any further than as he makes it his own by actual life; whence all who die in infancy are saved, special means being provided by the Lord in the other life for that purpose.

8.That Repentance is the first begin. ning of the Church in man; and that it consists in a man's examining himself, both in regard to his deeds and his intentions, in knowing and acknowledging his sins, confessing them before the Lord, supplicating him for aid, and beginning a new life: That to this end, all evils, whether of affection, of thought, or of life, are to be abhorred and shunned as sins against God, and because they proceed from infernal spirits, who in the aggregate are called the Devil and Satan; and that good affections, good thoughts, and good actions, are to be cherished and performed, because they are of God and from God: That these things are to be done by man as of himself; nevertheless, under the acknowledgment and belief, that it is

from the Lord, operating in him and by him That so far as man shuns evils as sins, so far they are removed, remitted, or forgiven; so far also he does good, not from himself, but from the Lord; and in the same degree he loves truth, has faith, and is a spiritual man: And that the Decalogue teaches what evils are sins.

9. That Charity, Faith, and Good Works are unitedly necessary to man's salvation; since charity without faith, is not spiritual but natural; and faith without charity, is not living but dead; and both charity and faith without good works, are merely mental and perishable things, because without use or fixedness: And that nothing of faith, of charity, or of good works is of man; but that all is of the Lord, and all the merit is his alone.

11. That immediately after death, which is only a putting off of the material body, never to be resumed, man rises again in a spiritual or substantial body, in which he continues to live to eternity; in heaven, if his ruling affections, and thence his life, have been good; and in hell, if his ruling affections, and thence his life, have been evil. 12. That now is the time of the Second Advent of the Lord, which is a coming, not in Person, but in the power and glory of his Holy Word: That it is attended, like his first coming, with the restoration to order of all things in the spiritual world, where the wonderful divine operation, commonly expected under the name of the Last Judgment, has in consequence been performed; and with the preparing of the way for a New Church on the earth,-the first Christian Church having spiritually come to its end or consummation, through evils of life and errors of doctrine, as foretold by the Lord in the Gospels: And that this New or Second Christian Church, which will be the Crown of all Churches, and will stand forever, is what was representatively seen by John, when he beheld the holy city, New Jerusalem, descending from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.'

are still considerably numerous, they are there sometimes, for the purpose of distinction, called Hooker Mennonites, on account of their wearing hooks on their