Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/17

 statement—in substance if not in words. Thus in his preface to the Apocalypse Revealed, he says:

"Any one may see that the Apocalypse could no how be explained but by the Lord alone, since every word of it contains arcana which never could be known without some special illumination and consequent revelation. Wherefore it has pleased the Lord to open the sight of my spirit and to teach me. It must not, therefore, be supposed that I have given any explication of my own, nor that even of any angel, but only what I have had communicated to me from the Lord alone."

And in his treatise on "The Intercourse between the Soul and the Body," he relates a conversation that he once had with "a man of reason," explaining to him how it was that from a philosopher he became a theologian. After telling him that it was "for the same reason that fishermen became the disciples and apostles of the Lord," adding that he also "from early youth had been a spiritual fisherman;" and after explaining what this means, and confirming what he says by citing passages from the Word which speak of fishermen, unfolding at the same time their spiritual meaning, his interrogator "raised his voice and said:

Now I can understand why the Lord called and chose fishermen to be his disciples; and therefore I do not wonder that He has also called and chosen you, since, as you have observed, you were from early youth a fisherman in a spiritual sense, that is, an investigator