the orthodox, who, in the most unqualified sense of the term, repudiate from their justifying faith every thing that could by any means be construed into a good or holy affection of the mind, as being in itself quite sufficient to overthrow the whole system. The author, to whom we have already adverted, and who is no mean authority among the Calvinistic Baptists, candidly admits that, "If faith be a work at all, it is not easy to conceive how sinners are justified by faith without works."+ How refreshing it is to turn from these vain janglings about an abstract naked nonentity, and read such language as the following: "What is faith towards God, but a looking to Him, producing in the soul the divine presence, and at the same time a confidence that He is at hand ready to help? And what is true faith unless it be this, accompanied with a confidence that all good is from Him, and that it is this which makes our own good to be saving good."+ Such is the faith, and such is the good which the Sacred Scripture assures us the Lord imputes or reckons to man in the final decision of his destiny ;—and since these are of the Lord, and from the Lord, and terminate in the Lord, the true Christian may stand unmoved amidst all the taunts and sneers of those who charge him with going about to establish his own righteousness, so long as he is inwardly conscious of submitting himself to the righteousness of Christ, the righteousness which must exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, the righteousness which every one doeth who undergoes the process of regeneration, the righteousness which whoever worketh is accepted of God. (Rom. x. 3; Matt. v. 20; 1 John ii. 29; Acts x. 35.) Before proceeding further with our remarks, we would here invite the reader's particular attention to a fact which is but too commonly overlooked, if indeed it be ever thought of at all, by the generality of mankind, but which we consider as being of the highest importance to all inquirers after truth: it is this, that wherever imputation is ascribed to the Lord, it is an imputation of good alone, and never in one single instance of evil. It may, indeed, be contended, that when the Psalmist penned the words descriptive of the felicity of the just or justified man, “Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile," (Psa. xxxii. 2.) that the converse is necessarily implied, namely, "Cursed is the man to whom Jehovah imputeth iniquity;" but in reply to this, it may be urged, that such imputation of iniquity is not at all necessary, inasmuch as iniquity, wherever it exists, must carry with it both its own testimony against itself, and its own punishment. It is granted that there is here an appearance, by implication, that the Lord does impute iniquity as well * Vol. I. p. 77. + T.C.R. 655. as righteousness, but is it anything beyond an appearance? May not this appearance be classed with those merely apparent truths which attribute to the unchangeable God the changes implied in being angry, and repenting ? Paul in his epistle to the Romans has quoted this passage of David, and the application which he makes of it is to describe the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works; of him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly; and his language has been construed in favour of the monstrous doctrine that God really reckons, in his sovereign good pleasure, the ungodly as righteous, imputing to them the all-perfect righteousness of His Son. As we shall have occasion to recur to this idea again, we shall only remark here, that, if David in the above passage really meant to describe the blessedness of an ungodly man, he would hardly have spoken of him as one " in whose spirit there is no guile." (Rom. iv. 5.) Again, speaking of the ministry of reconciliation, the apostle thus describes it: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing, their trespasses unto them." (2 Cor. v. 19.) These are the only passages in Scripture where non-imputation is directly mentioned; and they are decidedly in favour of the position here advanced, namely, that the Lord imputes evil to no one. Nothing but what is purely good can proceed from the Lord; in as far as man receives and appropriates that good, he becomes qualified for the enjoyment of heaven;-he is the good man described in Scripture, who, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth that which is good ;—who, like Barnabas, being full of the regenerating influences of the Holy Spirit, and of faith, looks onward in the most humble hope of obtaining glory, honour, immortality, eternal life, only by patient continuance in well doing. But it may be objected, if the Lord imputes evil to no one, how can it be said with truth that when all shall appear before the judgment seat of Christ, every one shall receive the things done in the body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad? (2 Cor. v. 10.) This seeming difficulty will vanish when we attentively consider the declaration of the Lord Jesus Himself to whom all judgment is committed. "If any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word which I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.” (John xii. 47, 48.) On this subject Swedenborg has beautifully said: "In regard to the judgment from truth, the case is this; that the Lord never judges any one but from a principle of good, for He is desirous to raise up into heaven all persons whatever, yea even to Himself, if it were possible, being Himself essential mercy, and essential good; essential mercy and essential good cannot condemn any one, but it is man who condemns himself, because he rejects good; as man in the life of the body had shunned good, so he shuns it in another life, consequently he shuns heaven and the Lord; for the Lord cannot have His abode except in good, He abides indeed in truth, but not in truth separate from good. That the Lord doth not damn any one, or judge him to hell, He Himself declares in John: God sent not his Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world through him might be saved. This is the judgment, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."* These remarks are in perfect accordance with all that is said in Scripture of the final judgment, and plainly shew, that when man is placed in the light of heaven, or of the divine truth which is quick and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword, a discerner of the inmost thoughts and intents of the heart, his works will be made fully manifest of what sort they are. Then works that are really good, or that have been done from the united operation of faith and charity, will receive the Divine approbation; but self-accusation, self-condemnation will fill the soul of every one who has either neglected obedience to the Divine precepts, or rendered an external obedience to them from unhallowed motives. A faint, and but a faint idea of the felicity of the one class, and the misery of the other, together with the cause whence both are represented as proceeding, may be formed by recollecting that this cause is said to be the FACE OF GOD, which all rational minds must admit can never wear but one aspect, namely, that of pure benevolence. To see His face, or to have the light of His countenance lifted up on them, is an expression used in Scripture to signify all the happiness, all the bliss which the soul is capable of enjoying either here or hereafter; hence when "his servants" shall, in the true and scriptural sense of the words, " see his face," it will be to them the realization of that "exceeding great and eternal weight of glory" which no mortal eye can see, no mortal ear can hear, no mortal mind conceive; while on the contrary, and who can imagine the horrors of the contrast!-they who have rejected the great salvation, who have counted themselves unworthy of eternal life,-when the book of their own life is opened in the presence of Him who seeth not as man seeth, who alone can judge the heart, and from whom no secrets are hid,-when they see that their iniquities are set before the Judge, their secret sins in the light of His countenance, are said "to hide *A.C. 2335. themselves in the dens, and in the rocks of the mountains, and to call on the mountains and the rocks to fall on them, and hide them from the face of Him who sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb." Yes, the weeping, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth, all the miseries of hell itself, as experienced by the wicked, will be seen by all to be the result of their own doings, the necessary consequence of their own infatuated choice; and it would so appear even to themselves were they not in a state of mental blindness and infatuation, which causes them to impute the infliction of their sufferings to the Lord, rather than to their own states of opposition to his Divine holiness and blessedness. (To be continued.) ΙΑΚΩΒΟΣ. EXTRACTS FROM SWEDENBORG'S SPIRITUAL DIARY. (Now first translated from the original Latin; continued from page 257.) That the Natural Sciences, or the science of natural things, is at the present day like the ultimate heaven [which was destroyed, or passed away at the time of the last judgment, (see Apocalypse,)] which perverts truths into falsities. 249. I conversed to-day with the spirits and angels around me concerning various things, and afterwards concerning the sciences or the wisdom of the present day, which is of such a nature as not to be capable of serving as a plane for spiritual truths, still less for celestial truths; but [they form a plane] like [the present] ultimate heaven, which immediately perverts the truths descending from the [interior] heaven into the contrary. For, at the present day, whatever is taught by the sciences concerning the natural causes of phenomena, as of those things which are in the human body, and concerning the senses and similar things; and also whatever is [hence] deduced respecting the knowledge of the soul, and such like things,-all these deductions are full of false hypotheses, in which not a single truth comes into sight. Moreover, by these hypothetical and false deductions the way [to interior things] is closed, so that the thoughts cannot be extended beyond nature even in its grossest sphere, on which account spiritual and celestial things are considered as nothing. Now as there is such a plane into which spiritual truths fall, they must needs be kept back [or withheld from view]; nor can they penetrate, for there is no natural truth to receive, continue, and confirm them, but they are either repelled, or perverted into the contrary;—hence it may be evident what use scientific truths, or truths deduced from the sciences, may serve.-1747, Nov. 14, st. vet. * 250. I say, "What use," but I mean in respect to those who study the sciences in such a way as to be unwilling to believe any thing without them; but not that use [which is made of the sciences] in schools where nothing but such things are delivered and taught by the philosophers, even by those who are intended to perform offices in the priesthood, and also because such things form the exercises of youth, since they favour their natural desires (cupiditatibus) *. Since the world is such at the present day as to be called learned, and is willing to believe nothing but what it can understand [by means of the natural sciences], wherefore with such the spiritual principle can scarcely operate, unless that false and mendacious plane be shaken entirely to pieces and perish, or unless it be changed into a plane of [genuine] natural truths. Of what nature such persons [as are in this perversion of science] are after death, they who have any judgment may conclude from this circumstance, that the life after death is a continuation of the life such as it was in the body, and that those things which are false and which cause blindness in spiritual things, induce as it were an incrustation (or shell) when the special and particular things of the [natural] memory perish, and thus pervert the nucleus or genius [of man]. Hence such persons cannot but become most stupid; and the more they were thus wise in the body, the more stupid they become, yea, most stupid than those who had never learnt any thing of the sciences, because they had applied them to the investigation of spiritual things.-1747, Nov. 14, st. vet. That love, or the Lord's mercy alone effects, that man is raised from the dead, and led to the celestial mansions. 322. From the divine mercy of the Lord, it has been permitted me to know, and indeed, this very day, by experience, that it is love, consequently, the Lord's mercy towards the human race, that desires to save all, and to bring them from hell into heaven; and this love is the sole and only cause of man's resurrection; for love in itself has such efficacy that it cannot otherwise be expressed, than by a drawing, or attraction (tractionem), and thus to conjunction [with the Lord], which is effected by indefinite means. By the same love and mercy all things are kept together in that connexion, order, and celestial form, in which they can be preserved.-1747, Dec. 9. That the avaricious after death appear to themselves to dwell, shut up, in subterranean cells, where there are mice. 384. There are degrees of avarice, and there are also ends which avarice has in view. They who have money only as an end, which they |