REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The Trial of the Spirits; or, a Demonstration of the Heavenly Doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg, as the same are set forth in a Vindication from the cavils of all Objectors, &c.

IN our former remarks upon this publication, we gave some account of this new adversary of the Church, and of the manner in which his work was conceived and brought forth; with some idea of the contents.* We now proceed to "the examination of the evidence, if such it may be called, brought forward on this singular trial." It would be utterly impossible to review this work page by page, without writing an article as long as the book itself, if not longer. We shall therefore lay before our readers some specimens of the manner in which the Rev. Mr. Ettrick treats his subjects; whence it will appear, that the considerations advanced in support of the New-Church Doctrines have not been examined; and yet judgment is pronounced against them. It seems scarcely necessary to observe, that the word "Trial” implies a fair statement of facts; a calm examination and crossexamination of the witnesses, or arguments produced; a deli berate consideration of the evidence; and a decision according to that evidence: but all these essentials have been entirely neglected in the Trial of the Spirits."

One of the most important of the sentiments maintained by the New Church, is that which she holds respecting the nature of the Sacred Scriptures. The reverend writer is aware, that the members of the New Church regard the book commonly called the Bible as consisting of two distinct classes of writings, one of which is properly the Word of God, the other not so, though written, for the most part, by men under a special illumination;

* We find it necessary a little to modify our former account of Mr. Ettrick's qualifications for the task he had undertaken. We then stated, what we understood our informant to have stated to us, that this refuter of "the heavenly doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg” had never seen any of his writings. We now however find, that among the three pamphlets which we mentioned as having been lent him, was Swedenborg's little tract On Influx, with, perhaps, one of the small Doctrines. He certainly, then, was better furnished than we were aware of, for his refutation of our Author; for he possibly had read about the two-hundredth part of his works!

and, that this division is not adopted by the members of the established religion. He is also aware, that the members of the New Church and of the established religion agree, that the Word of God, of whatever books it may consist, is of divine inspiration, but that they disagree as to the nature of such inspiration. As this difference between the New Church and the Church of England in regard to the nature of the Word of God, necessarily makes a great difference in their modes of understanding those books which belong to it, the first and most important points for the Rev. Writer to have settled, in order that the parties might meet upon equal footing, and the facts under consideration might be properly adjusted, would have been, to examine the grounds upon which the members of the New Church make these distinctions. But no such step is taken, and therefore a fair statement of facts is not found in the work under review; the grounds and arguments supporting the facts, and which may be considered as witnesses, are not examined; and it follows of course, that a false judgment is pronounced by the Reverend Writer.

To be a little more particular on the important points wherein the members of the New Church and of the established religion agree and disagree in regard to the Word and the other books in the Bible. First, then, both parties are agreed, that the following books were written by divine inspiration: In the Old Testament, all the books that the Lord refers to by the names of "the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms:*" viz. the five books of Moses, or of the Law, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy: the anterior Prophets;-Joshua, Judges, the two books of Samuel, and two of Kings; the Psalms; the posterior Prophets, viz. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zachariah, and Malachi and in the New Testament, the four Evangelists, and the Apocalypse. The members of the New Church maintain, first, that these books are written by a plenary divine inspiration, and hence constitute the Word of God: secondly, that there resides within the letter a spiritual sense, which sense is in all and every part of the Word: and thirdly, That it is by virtue of that sense that the Word is of divine inspiration. The truth of these positions, the members of the New Church maintain, is demonstrable from the science of correspon

dences, or of the analogy between natural things and spiritual,— a science known in ancient times, and agreeably to which, the members of the New Church affirm, the books in the Bible constituting the Word of God are written. The other books contained in the Bible may be subdivided into three general classes; in the first of which will stand the book of Job, which approaches more nearly than any of the others to the character of a book of the Word itself, being written according to the science of correspondences, and thus having an internal sense, but not in a perfect series, and in every expression: To the second class belong those written by eminently illuminated persons, under the Christian dispensation; as the Acts of the Apostles and their Epistles: and in the third stand those written by other persons, with a less degree of illumination, under the Mosaic dispensation; as the books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon.*

Now because the New Church makes this plain discrimination, upon the most solid and obvious grounds, between certain books in the Bible and others; Mr. Ettrick takes occasion, in his usual abusive manner, to charge us, like Pike, Beaumont and others, with rejecting certain books of Scripture. His moderate language is, "Either Paul and his colleagues must be set down as impostors, or at least as of all men the most miserable, most deceived and deserted; or Swedenborg, their accuser, must be considered as a man seduced, as Adam was, by the delusions of the devil, into a most foul and damnable apostacy," (P. 69.) And this, notwithstanding Mr. Hindmarsh had explicitly informed our “accuser," that we do not reject them; and notwithstanding the true state of the case is,-which, it seems, we are to repeat for ever to our opponents, while they are determined never to listen to it,-that we respect the books which we do not believe to form, properly part of the Word of God, especially, the Apostolic Epistles, as highly as they esteem the Word of God itself, while the Word of

* See this subject fully investigated in Mr. Noble's work on the Plenary Inspiration of the Scriptures, in the article of the Appendix intitled, " An Attempt to discriminate between those books of Plenary Inspiration contained in the Bible, and those written by the Inspiration generally assigned to the whole:" in which the distinction is established by a copious store of such external evidence as the learned generally acknowledge; and in which it is shewn, that a distinction between the one class of books and the other has always been acknowledged, though the exact nature of it was never before understood.

God itself is by us exalted immensely higher than by them. Thus all that they allege against us is mere cavilling about a word. They call all the books comprised in the Bible the Word of God: we deny some of those books to be the Word of God: whence this contradiction? because we understand the exalted phrase, "the Word of God," to mean a great deal more than they do; or, because they understand it to mean a great deal less than we do. The ideas we respectively attach to the title are different; and they quarrel with us, because we cannot use it in their low sense. Respecting the nature of the Apostolic Epistles, their ideas and ours are the same: but we cannot call them, as they do, the Word of God, because they do not contain a spiritual sense distinct from the letter, and are not written by correspondences, as, we are satisfied, must be the case with every composition which is strictly the Word of God: our adversaries themselves affirm, that they do not contain a spiritual sense and are not written by correspondences: how unjust then to charge us with rejecting them, merely because we cannot give them a name, which, as understood by us, includes much more then our adversaries themselves allow to them! Thus Mr. Ettrick quotes the following clear statement from Mr. Hindmarsh: "Other books, such as the Apostolic Acts and Epistles, are not rejected, but highly esteemed by the New Church. They are not indeed considered as books of the Word, because they are not written by correspondences, and have not the genuine internal sense, which every book written by divine inspiration must have:" on which Mr. E., in his customary style, remarks, "They are only reduced to a harmless caput mortuum, and so are then let down gently for the present, to avoid raising too great an alarm; the same experiment having failed in the case of Adam's original seduction, from a too bold precipitance of the serpent." (P. 70.) But did not Mr. E. see that this uncandid reproach recoils against himself? If to affirm of a book of the Bible that it is not written by correspondences, and has not an internal sense, is to reduce it to a mere caput mortuum, does not Mr. E. reduce to a caput mortuum the whole Word of God? But how ridiculous is the charge against us! What motive can we have for reducing the Apostolic Writings to a caput mortuum, and letting them down, either roughly or gently? We defy Mr.-E. to prove from them one doctrine which we reject, or to disprove from them one doctrine which we maintain; on the

contrary, all our most important doctrines we can, from them, most conclusively establish; which is much more than Mr. E. can do from them for his: we have, therefore, a stronger interest than he has in supporting their authority. What follows forms a good specimen of Mr. E.'s general manner: for thus he proceeds,still substituting railing for reasoning, misapplying Scripture, and refuting our sentiments of the Apostolic writings, by opposing to them the very same sentiments as we entertain!

"Thus has the crazy conception of one man, who had fortunately fallen into an age of spiritual empiricism*, supplied a test of the divine inspiration of Scripture, which prostrates every thing at his feet, according to the suggestion of his own spirits and angels; and he has found abundance of minds similarly warped with his own, to give at least a temporary currency to his base coin. "But I am against them that prophecy false dreams, saith the Lord, and do tell them, and cause my people to err through their lies, and by their lightness: yet I sent them not, nor commanded them. He that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord." Jer. xxiii. 28.

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Thus," he still proceeds, "by this abitrary law of SWEDENBORG, are the holy apostles of the Lord and Saviour pulled down from those thrones which the Lord promised them; and on which, by the general consent of the whole Christian world, they have been sitting and judging the spiritual Israel for nearly eighteen centuries; and, as we hoped, would have sat to the end of time. But by way of an apology for the apostolic writings, (for it seems, in our fastidious times, it has been deemed expedient to offer an apology for the Bible itselft,) it may be argued, that as their personal ministry was necessary to the age in which they preached the gospel, so were their writings no less necessary to the ages following; and were equally as much under the divine inspiration of the Holy Ghost, as their preaching was.

"The apostles were not, and could not be let into the whole plan of the gospel and of man's redemption, by the sufferings and death of Christ, while he was yet living; for many obvious reasons. But they were men chosen by him to be honest and impartial witnesses of his life and * The Italics are all his own.

+ We are surprised that a writer who makes so much display of learning, should not know that this was the name appropriated to such works from the beginning of the Christian Church; and especially, that he should understand the word apology in the vulgar sense of an excuse, and not know that it more properly signifies a defence or vindication. But abuse is so familiar to him, that, it seems, he cannot avoid throwing it on all that come in his way; thus if Swedenborg is pelted in Mr. E.'s pillory, he here has one of the most eminent of the dignitaries of his own church, the celebrated Bishop Watson, to bear him company.