Page:A brief discussion of some of the claims of the Hon. E. Swedenborg.pdf/22

 are the concomitants of a corrupted church; for in the progress of its perversions of truth, and recession from holiness, it will so interweave itself with secular interests and worldly institutions, as to render it a kingdom of this world merely. The existence then of Christianity, as it is popularly understood, is not proven to be genuine by the continuance of its forms, the observance of its ceremonies, or the number of its adherents. We must look at its internal principles as they are taught in its doctrines and propounded by its accredited authorities, in order to detect its actual quality. That it is influenced by some deleterious maxims is manifest from the facts that it is broken up into nearly a hundred different sects—that in each are to be found as many differing speculations—that most concur in acknowledging its leading doctrines to be inexplicable, and place reason under the subjection of faith—and that while all profess to derive their notions from the Bible as the standard of truth, not one of them has any distinct doctrine which teaches what are the laws of divine composition, or discloses a uniform principle for its interpretation; so that it is destitute of that very knowledge which is essential to the preservation of genuine truth.

Mark also that fearful animosity subsisting between the two general divisions of this professing church—the Catholic and the Protestant. Protestant societies say that the Catholic dispensation is "The Mother of Harlots;" forgetting, perhaps, that they are themselves her daughters. The Catholic, in return, pronounces the Protestant to be Antichrist; and thus, while exchanging the epithets of recrimination, they obliterate the activities of charity, and consign each other to the dwellings of the lost.

But look at what are called the essential doctrines, as they are professed by all. Are they not all asserted to be mysteries, when enlightened reason either ventures to remove the sackcloth in which they are clothed, or to disturb the ashes in which they are imbedded. Every one of them, at certain points of intelligent enquiry, recedes from the light of investigation, and forbids it to approach. The tripersonality of the Godhead is said to be a mystery, so is the atonement and the means of salvation thereby. The communication of grace, the activities of faith, the nature of the resurrection, the principles of judgment, the joys of Heaven, the torments of Hell, and the coming of the Lord, are all