Page:Swedenborgs Maximus Homo.pdf/56

 And if such multitudes of those belonging to the first Christian Dispensation, who lived before the second advent and in a comparatively dark age, are now in the New Heaven of angels, is it reasonable to suppose that none save the very small company of the readers and receivers of Swedenborg's teachings, are now in association with that New Heaven?—especially as we are told that "the slavery and captivity in which the man of the church was formerly," was removed by the Last Judgment, so that "he can now, from restored liberty, more easily perceive interior truths if he has a desire for them" (L. J. 74); that "the reception of divine truth and good became more universal, more interior and more easy in consequence of that Judgment" (A. E. 1217); that "the communication between the Lord and the church was restored" by the dispersion of those dark clouds [congregations of spirits immersed in falsities] "from the world of spirits" (Contin. L. J. 11); that, however the old creeds might remain for some time unchanged, the people of Christendom "would be in a more free state of thinking on matters of faith, that is, on spiritual things which relate to heaven, because spiritual liberty has been restored to them" (L. J. 73); and that, consequently, "the state of the world and of the church before the Last Judgment," compared with what it was, or was to be after, "was as