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 Word to be read by the people, and declare the Pope's decree to be equal and even superior to it."

This passage, written the very next year after the Last Judgment, shows that Swedenborg regarded the Protestant churches of even that day as Christian churches; and consequently regarded their baptism as Christian baptism. And it will not be denied, I presume, that the Protestant churches of our own times are considerably more Christian than they were a century and a quarter ago. Is it, then, a higher or a lower degree of, illumination than that of the Lord's chosen servant, which has made the discovery that the Protestant churches of to-day are not Christian churches, and their baptism, therefore, not Christian baptism?

Then, in the sentence immediately preceding the passage just quoted, the author says: "I will, by way of introduction to the doctrine which follows (the doctrine of the New Jerusalem, be it remembered), make some observations on the doctrine of charity as held by the ancients," which doctrine had then become so nearly extinct, that "the churches throughout the whole Christian world made their differences to depend upon points of faith." And to show that this state of things is not to be continued—that a difference "upon points of faith" is not to be allowed to separate churches, and set them in even "seeming antagonism " to each other under the New Jerusalem