Benjamin Worcester

“ Rough hands can seldom follow it, much less unravel it, without breaking or tangling it, or without injuring either the poetry or history which, knitting themselves into it, constitute it a complete unity. It is truly said, 'To explain belongs to God,' or to that man on whom there rests the spirit of the gods, the genius of all ages, and, so to speak, the childhood of the human race. ”

“ A Lutheran, he had no wish to renounce or supplant Lutheranism, but contented himself with getting kindred spirits to read and pray together, to renounce worldly vanities, and to live a pious, charitable life. The rapidity with which the people caught at his system shows the readiness of their hearts for something more satisfying than dogmatic theology. ”

“ What time more probable, when we take into view the nearness and the connection of the one world with the other, than the time when the old life of the Church came to its end, there was a pause, and then new life with astonishing power began to spring forth? ”

“ In the same year, 1757, appeared Brown's Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times, showing their chief characteristics to be "a vain, luxurious, and selfish effeminacy." our principles," said he, "are as bad as our manners; religion is universally ridiculed, and yet our irreligion is shallow. Thus by a gradual and unperceived decline, we seem gliding down from ruin to ruin; we laugh, we sing, we feast, we play, and in blind security, though not in innocence, resemble Pope's lamb, licking the hand just raised to shed his blood." ”

“ There has been no longer charity upon earth, Sir, since Christians left the Gospel simplicity; from that time charity began to wax cold; and when the Church would needs establish herself in pomp, riches, and magnificence, this outward splendor has utterly destroyed the spirit of the Gospel. Studies have banished the Holy Spirit, and the learning of men has stifled the wisdom of God" (p. 19) . ”

“ Dorner says, "The extension of vision in modern theology to the entire history and philosophy of religion, has already produced not only new problems, but brilliant and fruitful results, profitable not only to the theology of the New Testament, but also to the elucidation and confirmation of Christianity itself. ”

“ The most perfect organ of Revelation can only be the man who, from the first moment of his existence, in his entire person lives in a sphere of being pertaining to Revelation and never separated from God. But in the circumstance of his entire person being made an organ of Revelation, is given at once in inseparable unity external as well as internal revelation and the completion of both. For now the Divine life itself enters into a human life; it assumes a shape that embodies and manifests the Divine life in human form, and is therefore Divine-human. ”

“ And again, "In order to be assisted, the revelation of God, as found in the Bible, and even in the entire history of the human race, must be believed, and thus ever return to the great centre about which everything revolves and clusters—Jesus Christ, the Corner-stone and inheritance, the greatest messenger, teacher, and person of the Archetype." ”

“ Fichte, first after Swedenborg, sought a philosophic reason for the Incarnation:—
"Mankind is by the exertion of its freedom to destroy an antagonistic condition, and to form itself into a kingdom of God, into a world in which God alone is the principle of all activity, and in which nothing is done without Him from whom all human freedom proceeds, and to whom it is surrendered. ”

“ But there have come into play those healing forces which are as little within the grasp of human power as the destructive ones. Bright, fruitful sunbeams have announced the dawn of a new age, and a Higher Voice than that of man has called out of the chaos new creations, whose germ could scarcely have been imagined in the preceding centuries. ”

“ To the disciples of John the Baptist, who are many in these days, and who come to learn whether this is what was to come, the only answer can be, See whether, being blind, you will now receive sight; being lame you will walk; being deaf you will hear; being dead you will be raised up; being poor you will have the Gospel preached to you. ”

“ We have seen the mind of man sleeping profoundly in China, dreaming wildlyin Brahma, reposing restlessly in Buddha, half-waking in Persia, fully conscious in Egypt, strongly active in Greece. Then we have seen the life of strength taken up into the life of sacrifice, the power to do transmuted into the power to suffer, and Paganism fading in the light of Christianity. ”

“ Truth, which is the true Sun of Righteousness, cannot any longer appear openly; it is become black and hateful to all the world, who, desiring to be flattered and praised, cannot hear the truth, because it reproves the falsehood which now prevails. ”

“ Such is the blindness wherein we live at present, in which nobody makes a right judgment of himself, or of others, every one presuming to be saved without good works; whereas no works can be good if they do not proceed from charity, which is at present banished from the hearts of all men; for which cause there are no more perfect Christians upon earth, for the Christian life is all charity, and the love of God, which is no longer in use. ”

“ And why may not a sincere searcher of truth, in the present age, by labor, diligence, study, and prayer, with the best use of his reasoning powers, find out the proper solution of these knots and perplexities, which have hitherto been unsolved, and which have afforded matter for angry quarrelling? Happy is the man who shall be favored of Heaven to give a helping hand towards the introduction of the blessed age of light and love."
In what manner Swedenborg was thus favored, the body of this book should show. ”

“ In reference to the human soul there can be no philosophy but materialism. All the observation and experience of the greatest philosophers and physicians declare this. Soul is nothing but a mere name, which has a rational signification only when we understand by it that part of our body which thinks. ”

“ People do not perceive them, for want of reflecting seriously enough on the Holy Scriptures, or upon the inward life of men now-a-days: they amuse themselves with regarding only their outward piety, imagining that there are yet a great many good men, because they appear such; but before God all are corrupted. . . . Many souls will be deceived at death, who in their lifetime presumed they were true Christians, while in the sight of God they will be worse than heathens. ”

“ At a time when the spirit of the theology of the Church was eminently rationalistic, they were generally repudiated, and by the middle of the eighteenth century they had already fallen into neglect. . . . A latent scepticism and a wide-spread indifference might be everywhere traced among the educated classes. There was a common opinion that Christianity was untrue, but essential to society, and that on this ground alone it should be retained. . . . The old religion seemed everywhere loosening around the minds of men, and it had often no great influence even on its defenders. ”

“ In the God-man the inner spiritual miracle is so united with the outer world-reality, that the union of the Divine and human life, implied in the idea of inspiration without measure, forms a man who in the midst of the world is a personal miracle,—the God-man who, possessed of absolute worth in himself, fully answers to the communicating will of Divine love, and is withal destined both in himself to give perfect expression to human nature, and outside himself to consummate human nature. ”

“ Their system was violently opposed by the Orthodox, for they taught that regeneration was not effected by baptism, as Luther and Calvin held with the Mother Church, but was an awakening or conversion, which was conditioned in subsequent life by the Word of God; that only living faith attained justification, and that it must be active in preserving it, a sure guarantee existing only in a faith which gave evidence of being alive in a pious life and active Christianity. ”

“ Never had the outlook for Christianity been darker than during the period embraced by Swedenborg's life, from 1688 to 1772, In the time of Martin Luther the corruptions of the Roman Catholic Church were possibly more flagrant,—although, says Mosheim, in the seventeenth century "the corruptions, both in the higher and in the inferior orders of the Romish clergy, were rather increased than diminished, as the most impartial writers of that communion candidly confess." ”

“ The form and contents of Revelation only attain their consummation in the Divine Incarnation, and in such a way that the consummation of Divine Revelation in itself becomes also the consummation of religion, and therewith of humanity. This perfective process is carried into effect first of all in One who, as absolute God-man, is both the Revealer in the absolute sense and the Man embodying God's perfect image, while at the same time bringing about the consummation of the world. ”

“ A deistical atmosphere seemed to have settled upon this generation, and to have cut it off from vital communion with God. To order one's self according to mere natural reason and self-complacency in this finite state of existence, and to think of nothing beyond it, were regarded as true wisdom and sound common-sense. Religion was converted into morality, and morality into the politic teaching of Eudaæonism, in a coarser or more refined form. ”

“ The state to which we are approaching is one of the signs by which will be recognized that last war announced by Jesus Christ: Nevertheless, when the Son of Man Cometh, shall He find faith on the earth? ”

“ All who enter the kingdom of heaven attain it only through Him, through the example which He sets up in Himself for the whole race; for all are to be born again through Him, while He is the first and the firstborn Son. ”

“ History of Protestant Theology, ii. 473. ↑ In the history of recent German Catholicism . . . we again find solid ground; for a more intimate reciprocity exists between the Protestants and Catholics in Germany than in France. German science is the beautiful bend, uniting those who adhere to different confessional standpoints. . . . Protestants and Catholics have been nourished as twin-brothers at the same breast of German philosophy, though each one has assimilated his nourishment differently. ”

“ My lord, the people of our country live in frightful poverty, without bed, without furniture. The greater part even lack, for half the year, oat and barley bread, which makes their sole subsistence, and are obliged to tear it from their own and their children's mouths to pay their taxes. ”

“ When we consider that the clergy held the third part of the soil of France and exacted a tithe of the produce of the rest, affecting to call this tithe a free-will offering, while they prosecuted forty thousand lawsuits to enforce it, we can see that the crash must come, and can understand why Church and State domination must go down together.
"During the eighteenth century men were speculating on religion, government, and society in a more daring way than they had ever speculated on so great a scale before. ”

“ Is any time conceivable in the future more probable? It will not do to fall back on the old idea of "the end of the world." No one of common-sense now believes that this world will come to an end within practically conceivable time. Every one knows that the Greek words mean "the consummation of the age." (Matt. xxiv. 3; xxviii. 30.) Need we look for a more thorough consummation of a Christian age than was that of the last century? [37]
One question remains: how does Swedenborg profess to know this? ”

“ A century so opulent in accumulated falsities,—sad opulence, descending on it by inheritance, always at compound interest, and always largely increased by fresh acquirement on such immensity of standing capital,—opulent in that bad way as never century before was! ”

“ Nor should a student in Divinity imagine that our age is arrived at a full understanding of everything which can be known by the Scriptures. Every age since the Reformation hath thrown some further light on difficult texts and paragraphs of the Bible, which have been long obscured by the early rise of Antichrist; and since there are at present many difficulties and darknesses hanging about certain truths of the Christian religion ”

“ And, does he ask more about the Roman Catholic Church, show him the temporal power a suppliant at every Court in Europe, but the spiritual power never so great in restraining the evil passions of men, in educating and curing souls. ”

“ In 1690 John Evelyn had noted in his Diary the prediction of the Bishop of St. Asaph that the judgment would come in thirty years; and he himself, gentleman and courtier, wrote that if ever corruption betokened a judgment at hand, then was the time. In 1713, in a Pastoral Charge to his clergy. Bishop Burnet said: "I see the imminent ruin hanging over the Church, and by consequence over the whole Reformation. The outward state of things is bad enough. God knows; but that which heightens our fears rises chief from the inward state into which we have unhappily fallen." ”

“ The conditions of a consummation are as obvious in the causes of the French Revolution as in the catastrophe itself. Among these causes we may reckon first the oppression of the laboring class by Church and State and Gentry, all for mere voluptuous indulgence. Fénelon wrote to the king,—
"Your people are dying of hunger. The tillage of the land is almost abandoned. Towns and villages are being depopulated. All the trades languish and no longer feed the workmen. ”

“ John Cairns, in his essay on Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century:—
"Not only was the Deistic wave rolled back by the dikes opposed to it, but by a higher influence was made to fertilize the recovered soil. The beleaguered fortress was not only set free, but in its lowest depths was opened a spring of living water. . . . Christianity has not been saved to us in Great Britain mainly by the arguments of Butler and Sherlock, but by the slow yet sure revival that began to spread over the whole English-speaking world ”

“ The meaning of the text is, that neither the form nor the content of Revelation attains its perfection and the goal which Revelation cannot but propose to itself, until it has passed into Incarnation. On God's side, the purpose of His love from the beginning is perfect self-communication ”

“ And further, speaking of the types of Leviticus,—"Though Christ in His work is the sum and substance of these types, it is Christ as discerned by one who already knows the certainty of redemption; it is Christ as seen by one who, possessing peace with God and deliverance, is able to look with joy at all that Christ has so fully been for him, . ”