Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/350

332 marvellous manner of his kind, declared: "I am not acquainted with the religious system of Assessor Swedenborg, nor shall I take any trouble to become acquainted with it."

Still, leaning apparently on hearsay and on angry glances at one of Swedenborg's books, he did not hesitate to declare "Swedenborgianism" "corrupting, heretical, injurious, and, in the highest degree, objectionable." 10

Swedenborg had gone to Amsterdam with the manuscript of a new book when the full heresy hunt was on in 1769, but he fought back by letter, a letter which the orthodox clergymen involved said was "sinister." Swedenborg did in effect call them all liars, but what the clergy was most upset by was, not unnaturally, that Swedenborg in the letter came right out and said that the Doctrine of the New Church had been published to the world by the Saviour through his servant, Swedenborg.

When Swedenborg returned to Stockholm in October, 1769, he found himself well received, dined with the Crown Prince and Princess, had long talks with them, with the senators, with all but one of the bishops present, "all of whom treated me with kindness," as he wrote to Dr. Beyer. There is no doubt that the storm raged chiefly among the more provincial clergy, and in May, 1770, Swedenborg wrote a spirited letter to the King himself, reminding His Maiesty how, when he had been dining with the royal family, as well as five senators, his "mission constituted the sole topic of conversation, and how he had declared it before the whole of Christendom."

No answer was sent to this letter, but the King, together with Swedenborg's powerful friends, quietly sanded up the whole matter, the only sop given to the irate Dean Ekebom being that the two men accused of being "adherents" of Swedenborg's, Drs. Beyer and Rosén, were no longer to lecture on theological matters at the gymnasium.

Swedenborg, however, did not wait in Sweden to see the end of the affair. It may be true, as Robsahm tells, that in 1769 a senator warned him that some of the clergy had plotted to have him declared insane and shut up in an asylum. In any case, feelings had run high. Before Swedenborg left for Amsterdam in 1770 he gave