progress, on this subject, of Mr. Wesley's mind. It is not, however, here offered with the view of casting any imputation on his memory. I have little doubt, that, though some erroneous sentiments confirmed in his understanding prevented him from accepting, in this world, the doctrines of the New Church, his intentions were upright, and there was a principle of real good in his heart, which, in the other life would throw off the errors that obscured it, and enable him to receive the truth. This, it is probable, was seen by Swedenborg, and was the reason of his inviting him to an interview: and thus, I trust, though Mr. Wesley acted chiefly as an opponent to him while on earth, he may now be associated with him in heaven. Let it, also, be remembered, that for the alleged facts published by Mr. Wesley, Mr. Wesley himself is not responsible: he was herein imposed upon by Mathesius. Let not, then, his followers still confirm themselves against Swedenborg's testimony by what Mr. Wesley published against him: let them rather weigh, without Mr. Wesley's prejudices, the reasons he had, and might have had, for coming to a finally favorable conclusion; and let them accept the sentiments which, we may hope, Mr. Wesley now holds, instead of adhering to those which he, in all probability, has rejected."

XIX.

REFUTATION OF THE FALSE REPORTS

PROPAGATED BY

THE REV. MR. WESLEY.

"It has given much pain," says Mr. Noble in the same work, p. 243, "to the receivers of the doctrines communicated in the writings of Swedenborg, that the circulation of the report of his insanity should have been materially promoted by a man so much entitled to respect as the late Rev. Mr. Wesley. It is however certain, that in the part which that respectable person took in the affair, he was completely imposed upon by the minister of the Swedish Chapel in London, Mr. Mathesius, who was Swedenborg's personal and violent enemy. Mr. Wesley, indeed, professes to give his statement on the authority of a Mr. Brockmer, as well as of Mathesius: this, however, was only because Mathesius told him that he derived his information from Brockmer; but this, Brockmer totally denied," as is evident from the following document :

"Refutation of the false Reports propagated by Mr. Wesley.*

"Mr. Wesley asserted, in his Arminian Magazine for August, 1783, p. 438, that he was informed by one Mr. Brockmer, of London, and also by Mr. Mathesius, a Swedish clergyman, that Swedenborg, while he lodged at the house of the former, had a violent fever, in the height of which, being totally delirious, he broke from Mr. Brockmer, ran into the street stark naked, proclaimed himself

*See Hindmarsh's "Vindication of the Character and Writings of the Hon. Emanuel Swedenborg, &c.," pp. 15-20. 2nd Edit.

the Messiah, and rolled himself in the mire.' Being desirous (says the Rev. Robert Hindmarsh), of ascertaining the truth or falsehood of this story from Mr. Brockmer's own mouth, I made it my business, in company with three other gentlemen now deceased, to wait upon him at his apartments in Fetter-lane, and to ask him whether he had ever communicated to Mr. Wesley, or to any other person, such information as above stated, at the same time showing him the different numbers of the Magazine, in which the reports published by Mr. Wesley are contained. After hearing the passages read, Mr. Brockmer, without hesitation, denied the fact, positively declaring, that he had never opened his mouth on the subject to Mr. Wesley, nor had he ever given such an account to any other person: and he seemed much displeased, that Mr. Wesley should have taken the liberty to make use of his name in public print, without his knowledge or consent. Swedenborg,' said he, was never afflicted with any illness,* much less with a violent fever, while at my house: nor did he ever break from me in a delirious state, and run into the street stark naked, and there proclaim himself the Messiah, as Mr. Wesley has unjustly represented. But perhaps he may have heard a report to that effect from some other person; and it is well known, that Mr. Wesley is a very credulous man, and easily to be imposed upon by any idle tale, from whatever quarter it may come.'

'I then put the following question to Mr. Brockmer: Supposing it to be true, that Swedenborg did actually see and converse with angels and spirits, did you ever observe anything in his behavior, that might not naturally be expected on such an extraordinary occasion? He replied as follows: If I believed that to be true, I should not wonder at anything he said or did; but should rather wonder, that the surprise and astonishment which he must have felt on such an occasion, did not betray him into more unguarded expressions than were ever known to escape him: for he did and said nothing, but what I could easily account for in my own mind, if I really believed what he declares in his writings to be true.'

86

It is to be observed, that Mr. Brockmer was one of the people called Moravians, who are by no means friendly to the doctrines of the New Church, as laid down in the writings of Swedenborg. The testimony, therefore, of such a man in favor of the equable and becoming deportment of his noble lodger, and to the silencing of those unfounded reports, to which Mr. Wesley (once an admirer of Swedenborg and his writings, but afterwards an avowed enemy to both),† so hastily and unworthily lent himself, must be received with due respect by every candid and unprejudiced mind.

"It appears, then, that the report of Swedenborg's having been seized with a fever, in the height of which he broke from Mr. Brockmer, ran into the street naked, and proclaimed himself the Messiah, is totally false. But even supposing it to be true, that he once had a fever accompanied with delirium, an affliction to which the wisest and best of men are subject, what has this to do with the general tenor of his writings, composed while he was in perfect health? Is the character of a man to be estimated by what he says or does in such a state? Would Mr. Wesley, or any other person, wish to be judged in this way?

"Mr. Brockmer died a few months after he made the declaration above recited:

* That Swedenborg enjoyed excellent health, and was never known, in his own country, to have had a violent fever, is asserted by M. Sandel; see p. 36, and note † See above pp. 106-108.

but the peruke-maker alluded to by Mr. Wesley, namely, Mr. Richard Shearsmith, who lived in Coldbath Fields, Clerkenwell, and at whose house Swedenborg afterwards lodged and died, survived Mr. Brockmer many years. Him also I well knew, and have often had occasion to speak to him of the character, habits, and manners of Swedenborg: and he uniformly gave the most unequivocal and honorable testimony concerning him, both with respect to the goodness of his heart, and the soundness of his understanding. He declared himself ready to attest (upon oath, if required), that, 'from the first day of his coming to reside at his house, to the last day of his life, he always conducted himself in the most rational, prudent, pious, and christian-like manner: and he was firmly of opinion, that every report injurious to his character had been raised merely from malice or disaffection to his writings, by persons of a bigoted and contracted spirit.' Mr. Shearsmith has been dead now for some years, I saw him not long before his death; and he continued to bear the same testimony, which he had so often repeated in my hearing during the course of the thirty years that I had known him.

"The other person, whom Mr. Wesley names as having given him the same information as Mr. Brockmer had done, was Mr. Mathesius, a Swedish clergy

man.

Of the credit due to this Mathesius, the following extract of a letter from Christopher Springer, Esq., a Swedish gentleman of distinction then resident in London, and the intimate friend of Swedenborg, will enable the reader to form a just and correct estimate. Speaking of Swedenborg's death, he observes,† · 'When the deceased found his end approaching, and expressed a wish to have the communion administered to him, somebody present at the time proposed sending for Mr. Mathesius, the officiating minister of the Swedish Church. This person was known to be a professed enemy of Swedenborg's, and had set his face against his writings. It was he that raised and spread the false account of Swedenborg's.having been deprived of his senses. Swedenborg therefore declined taking the sacrament from him, and actually received it from the hands of another ecclesiastic of his own country, named Fernelius, who at that time was a reader of Swedenborg's writings, and is said to have continued to do so ever since, at Stockholm, where he is now living (in 1786); and I have been assured, that, on this occasion, Swedenborg expressly exhorted him to continue steadfast in the truth. Mr. Mathesius is said to have become insane himself, a short time after this; and becoming thereby incapable of his function, has existed ever since, in that melancholy state, upon the bounty of the king of Sweden.'

"What now are we to say of the report first invented by Mr. Mathesius the Lutheran divine, afterwards propagated by Mr. Wesley the Arminian divine, and lastly by Mr. Pike the Baptist divine, but that they each found it the easiest and most convenient argument to be drawn against the heavenly doctrines contained in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg? When the theologians of former days found themselves unable to withstand the new, but powerful, doctrines of divine truth delivered by the Saviour of the world, some said, 'He is a good man: others said, Nay; but he deceiveth the people' (John vii. 12). He is

* See above p. 86.

† See above p. 85. We repeat the extract here for the sake of the connexion. See above p. 78.

.

beside himself' (Mark iii. 21). 'And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him? But others said, these are not the words of him that Now we hath a devil: can a devil open the eyes of the blind? (John x. 20, 21.) know the truth of our Lord's words, when He saith, The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple to be as his master, and the servant as his lord: if they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household' (Matt. x. 24, 25). And again, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you' (John xv. 20). In all ages of the church, divine truth has been persecuted in the persons of those who have been its most strenuous asserters and advocates; and in general according to the degree in which they have manifested their sincerity, integrity, and faithfulness in the discharge of their duty, in the same degree have they been subjected to the derision and scorn of the world. It was not therefore to be expected, that Swedenborg, the distinguished and devoted servant of his Lord, would escape the malevolent and bitter attacks of his enemies, who either through ignorance of the doctrines he taught, or through envy at their success, are disposed to treat the disciple in the same ungenerous manner as their predecessors of old had treated his Divine Master. But as Michael the archangel, in disputing with the devil about the body of Moses (the historical sense of the Word), durst not bring against him a railing accusation, so it is the duty of those who are engaged in the defence of a good cause, to imitate so illustrious an example, and to leave all judgment to him who cannot err."

"There is no trace of any allusion, (says the Rev. S. Noble, in his Appeal &c.,' p. 244,) to this tale of the fever and consequent delirium in any authentic source of information: and the Chevalier de Sandel, we have seen above,* not only declares, that Swedenborg, 'being endowed with a strength of faculties truly extraordinary, in the decline of his age, soared to the greatest heights to which the intellectual faculty can rise,'-for this might be the case notwithstanding his having had a fever and delirium; but he asserts further, that he enjoyed such excellent health, that he scarcely ever experienced the slightest indisposition.' Could this general assertion have been made, if so terrible an exception to it had ever happened? In short, what with the inherent inconsistencies in the story itself, and the virtual refutation of it by Sandel, there is enough to evince its utter falsehood, could no direct contradiction of it be given. But such direct contradiction of it, taken from the lips of Mr. Brockmer, does exist, testified by the Rev. R. Hindmarsh, who was still living to confirm it. Thus the whole origin of the story was evidently no more than this: Swedenborg mentioned freely to Brockmer the commencement of his spiritual intercourse: Brockmer talked of it: and from the idle reports which thus got abroad, Mathesius, nearly forty years afterwards, fabricated the tale with which he imposed on Mr. Wesley. This fact is alone sufficient to fix the brand of imposture on the whole story. The charge against Swedenborg of mental derangement, is built upon

† Page 36.

* Page 23. When the first edition of the "Appeal, &c." was published. See above p. 110.

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! What more palpable mark of fabrication could exist?

"But if from the story of the fever and delirium (continues Mr. Noble), assumed as true, any should continue to argue that Swedenborg remained insane ever after; with much more plausibility might it be argued, that a man who became positively insane, and continued the remainder of his life in that state, might have been partially deranged long before it was suspected: and if so, we could easily account for Mathesius' imagining the tale he propagated; for that he went mad, is a well-authenticated fact. We are by no means prone to assume the distribution of divine judgments; but it really is difficult to avoid thinking that we behold one here. All must allow it to be a remarkable coincidence, that the man who first imputed insanity to Swedenborg, and was the chief cause of its being believed by others, should himself have experienced the deplorable visitation; which happened, also, soon after he gave the information to Mr. Wesley. The Abregé des Ouvrages d' Em. Swedenborg, which was published at Stockholm in 1788, states in the preface, that Mathesius had become insane, and was then living in that state in that city. The same is affirmed in the New Jerusalem Magazine; one of the editors of which was Mr. C. B. Wadstrom, a Swedish gentleman of great respectability, well known for his efforts in the cause of the abolition of the slave-trade, and who must have had ample means of knowing the fact. In a MS. minute, also, in my possession,* of a conversation held by Mr. Provo, May 2nd, 1787, with Mr. Bergstrom, master of the King's Arms (Swedish) Hotel, in Wellclose-square; the latter says as follows:† Mr. Mathesius was an opponent of Swedenborg, and said that he was lunatic, &c.; but it is remarkable that he went lunatic himself; which happened one day when he was in the Swedish church and about to preach: I was there and saw it: he has been so ever since, and sent back to Sweden, where he now is: this was about four years ago.' All the accounts agree: and thus evident it is, that into the pit which this unhappy man digged for another, did he fall himself."

XX.
TESTIMONY

OF

THE CELEBRATED OBERLIN,

OF THE BAN-DE-LA-ROCHE, OR STEINTHAL,

RESPECTING SWEDENBORG'S INTERCOURSE WITH THE
SPIRITUAL WORLD.

This testimony is recorded in the Intellectual 'Repository for April, 1840. pp. 151-162, in a visit, which the Rev. J. H. Smithson paid to the worthy and exemplary Oberlin two years prior to his death. Having described certain particulars of the journey from Strasburg to the Ban-de-la-Roche where Oberlin lived, Mr. S. proceeds as follows:

* Since printed at length in the Intellectual Repository for January, 1830, and inserted above p. 77.

† See above p. 78.