almost unanimous opinion of that church for many ages? Certainly we have. The opinion of Emanuel Swedenborg? O, no;—not his opinion, but his demonstrations. We have fallen into the same sort of heresy in regard to spiritual things, that has prevailed so extensively, within the last two hundred years in regard to the truths of natural science. We are following in the footsteps of those reckless innovators, who have been rash enough to accept and rely upon the results of scientific demonstration and actual experiment, even though opposed to those doctrines which had been received "always, everywhere and by all." And the alledged authority of ecclesiastical councils will probably be about as successful, in preventing the reception of the divine realities of the New Dispensation, as the thunders of the vatican were in stopping the revolutions of the earth, or blotting from existence the satellites of the planet Jupiter.
From the views presented above, it will readily be seen, that while we entertain a very high regard for the writings of the apostles, and believe them to have been designed, by Divine Povidence, for a very important use, yet we do not regard them as a part of the divine word. Nor do we even regard them as containing a very full developement of the internal and spiritual meaning of that word. In order to reach the minds of those for whom they were intended, they necessarily present the external and apparent forms of divine truth, rather than its more internal and spiritual forms. And as the illumination of the writers appears not to have extended to those interior truths, which are now laid open for the use of the church, it is a necessary inference, that they must have entertained imperfect and even erroneous views, in regard to the true meaning of many portions of the word. We cannot therefore accept the apparent, or even real meaning of an occasional passage in those writings, as a sufficient reason for rejecting a doctrine, which rests upon the internal sense of the divine word; and is also confirmed by the demonstrations of ra-
