THE
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
Not a few have laboured at the explication of the Apocalypse, but as they were unacquainted with the spiritual sense of the Word, they could not discern the arcana which it contains, seeing that these can only be unfolded by the spiritual sense: expositors have therefore formed various conjectures respecting it, in many instances applying its contents to the affairs of empires, and blending them, at the same time, with ecclesiastical matters. The Apocalypse, however, in like manner as the rest of the Word, treats not, in its spiritual sense, of mundane things, but of such as are heavenly, thus not of empires and kingdoms, but of heaven and the church.
It is to be observed that, after the last judgment, which was accomplished in the spiritual world, in the year 1757, and which forms the subject of a small treatise published in London in 1758, a new heaven was formed from among
