visits." (Merveilles du Ciel, etc. p. 78. Berlin, 1782.) It is quite manifest that they are the two Counts H. and T. mentioned in the Monatschrifft. (Above, p. 322.) Thus we find his admirer boasting of his intimacy with the two Swedish politicians, whom his opponents circumstantially marked out for his criminal accomplices. This hangs well together.

The said Hopken, "who was prime minister of Sweden, and as such had the chief conduct of Swedish affairs, was intimately acquainted with Swedenborg for forty-two years, and consequently must have been well acquainted with all that took place at court," (above, p. 63,) with his own lips assured Dom Pernety, that Swedenborg, being consulted by the Countess de Marteville concerning the lost receipt for a debt paid by her deceased husband, told her next day that he had spoken to her husband's ghost, and learned from him where it was. It was found accordingly. Hopken furthermore assured Pernety of the truth of the whole story of Swedenborg being consulted by Ulrica about the letter, and miraculously revealing its contents. Hopken was himself (as he stated) the person sent by Ulrica to bring Swedenborg to her, which fixes him, beyond doubt, as the Count H. of the Monatschrifft. "Where is the senator alleged by our mysterious friend on sait to have intercepted the correspondence? What is his name?" His name, Sir, is Hopken.

Dom Pernety printed a letter from Christopher Springer, a man of character; from which Mr. Clowes, "in candour and a sincere regard to justice and impartial judgment, both before God and man," quoted part of an all-important sentence, omitting the residue. (Above, p. 516.) Mr. Springer questioned Swedenborg about the story of Ulrica's letter to her brother, and he replied, "Beaucoup en est vrai, et beaucoup ne l'est pas, et peut être que tout est mieux connu à Berlin." Much was true. Much of what? The story had two faces, and two only. The one exhibited necromancy, miracles, and revelations. The other, political intrigue, imposture, and villany. To which, to much of which, does the wretched man plead guilty? An important question; for if to the former, Swedenborgians would be satisfied, and believe in his ghosts as they do in his angels. The gnat would follow the camel. But if the latter, every honest and moral Swedenborgian must abandon him. Nothing could possibly be known at Berlin about Swedenborg's secret revelations and midnight ghost-seeings. But the cabals and intrigues of the revolutionary and perturbed Swedish court had their ramifications at the court of Berlin, and many of them were not unknown there. It is therefore, beyond dispute, the HopkenTessin-Swedenborg imposture of which he admits that much was true. We must observe, that while his character trembled in the balance between a reputation of virtue and infamy, he did not even attempt to combine vindication with denial; or so much as to insinuate that the "much that was not true" was the infamous part, and "the much that was true" an innocent portion of the affair. He has not one word to help himself.

Sometimes we talk of historical names as if they were mere abstract values, not real men like you and me. Only suppose, Sir, that

I were accused of having pretended to raise the late Duke of Kent's spirit, to have received communications from the deceased prince, and to have imposed them as truths upon the unsuspecting and confiding mind of my sovereign, his royal daughter, in order to forward some political cabal. Suppose again, Sir, that you questioned me on this imputation, and that I answered you thus, "Much of it is true, and much of it is not ;" and then added, with a knowing wink, "perhaps they know all about it at Brussels," or "at Saxe-Cobourg," naming some court in connexion with our own. Would you not instantly revolve upon your heel, and turn your back upon a man not more profligate in his actions than impudent in his avowals, and unworthy to appear again in English society? I will now leave Queen Ulrica's conjuror, blasted and scorched by the breath of his own lips.

Swe

Now he comes on in another character. Mr. Springer states (did Mr. Clowes quote?) that, having heard that Swedenborg had announced the great conflagration at Stockholm at Gottenburg, three days before the intelligence (by natural unangelic means) reached the latter place, he inquired of him concerning that fact also. denborg said it was exactly true. When we consider the very agitated and revolutionary state of Sweden in the latter half of the eighteenth century, of which Ankerstroem's crime was the upshot, this story must fill our minds with black and horrible suspicion." As Apollonius of Tyana at Ephesus cried, "Strike, Stephanus, strike the tyrant!" so Swedenborg at Gothenburg cried "Stockholm burns!" We have already seen him acting, and confessedly, in concert with political intriguers. Let us in mercy hope that in this instance he lied to Springer, and was nothing worse than a charlatan.

When he had completed his Vera Rel. Christ. (to which, however, he afterwards tacked on a postscript, outdoing all his former extravagance,) Swedenborg affixed to it this memorandum: "After this work was finished, the Lord called together his twelve disciples, who followed him in the world, and the next day he sent them throughout the whole spiritual world to preach the gospel that the Lord Jesus Christ reigneth, etc. . . . This was done on the 19th day of June, in the year 1770." From this we may well conjecture that in the summer of 1770 steps were taken, and emissaries or apostles sent about, to diffuse the Swedenborgian heresy far more widely than before.

I have observed, that one should wish to know the nature and degree of connexion between Pernety (and, through him, of the Avignon and Roman societies) and Swedenborg. I do not perceive that Dom Pernety anywhere speaks of having seen or personally known Swedenborg, or on the other hand that he anywhere expresses or implies the contrary; which silence is a little remarkable. But one curious thing drops from him. The story of the Count de Marteville's ghost was told him (he says) by two persons, Count Hopken, and the wife of Swedenborg's gardener. How came the learned French Benedictine to have private conversations with a Scandinavian peasant wench in the baron's service? He must, it seems to me,

have been a visitor to Swedenborg at his villa of Suderman. For no one would have brought the woman over from Sweden to Germany or France, merely to tell Pernety tales of a cock and a bull. But if we find Pernety so intimate with Swedenborg as to be with him at his country house, and in familiarity with the menials of his establishment, the Swedenborgian lodges, over which that Benedictine monk, "In Rosycrucian lore as learn'd

As he that Verè Adeptus earn'd,"

and his friends Grabianca and Ottavio Capelli seem to have presided, had incomparably more to do with Swedenborg than with "the pope."

Monsieur de Sandel, in his Eloge de Swedenborg, delivered after his death before the Swedish Institute, observes the greatest circumspection in handling the tender parts of his character. He endeavours to bestow some little praise on his religious works, by saying that they might do service to true philosophy as alchemy proved of use to true chemistry. He refers the supernatural part to his bare assertion, without hazarding an opinion whether or not he had made it sincerely. But he mentions an important fact. Bishop Swedberg, his father, had, he says, some like propensities; at least, his works shew a disposition to represent certain events as having singular significations. See Sandel's Eloge ap. Pernety, p. 60. These works require to be examined. This very guarded author may mean nothing less than that the system of correspondentiæ was known to Swedenborg all his life, and learned by him from his father. And if so, all his followers must open their eyes to the deliberate imposture, which pretended to learn it from angels very long afterwards. It would place him in even a worse position than Boehmen. H.

ON SWEDENBORGIANISM.

MY DEAR SIR, I can have no hesitation in admitting that my acquaintance with the writings of Swedenborg has been formed by means of extracts from them, but then they were made by his most devoted followers. Neither the work which formed the main substance of my materials for conviction on the subject, nor yet the book by Jung-Stilling, are now within my reach, though when I wrote the letter, two years ago and upwards, I could have pointed out my places of reference. A similar notion to that of Jung-Stilling I recollect also to have met with in that defunct and able periodical "The Morning Watch.”

I am sufficiently familiar with the mysterious phraseology of Swedenborgianism to be fully on my guard against laying much stress on isolated passages, such as "Antitheorist" has furnished from the Baron's publications. Nor does Coleridge's favourable expression sway with me, for, deeply conscious as I am of our obligation as Britons, as Christians, as churchmen, to his demolition of the so

That was the real name, which the son afterwards changed to Swedenborg.

phistry of Locke and Paley, the point in which the lamented poet and philosopher was wanting seems to have been exegesis; nor can the careful student of prophecy attach any weight to the opinions of the rejector of Daniel upon a system, the value or worthlessness of which can only be ascertained in the light of a well-digested judgment on the right manner of interpreting Scripture. I am sorry to add that the one meed of praise which I had bestowed on the disciples of Swedenborg-viz., that they denied not a sacrifice, (in other words, denied not the guilt of sins, even after they were repented of,) I have since found reason to withdraw, as I take this occasion of doing.

Faithfully yours,

PAPIAS.

MR. FROUDE AND THE ENGLISH REFORMERS.

SIR, It was, I think, Dr. Elrington of Dublin who first pointed out the very important discrepancy between the language of Mr. Froude on the subject of the English Reformation, and the construction which Dr. Pusey apparently endeavours to put upon that language, in his "Letter to the Bishop of Oxford." When Mr. Froude says (Rem. vol. i. part 1, p. 433) "the Reformation was a limb badly set; it must be broken again, in order to be righted:" no one who is acquainted with his writings can doubt that he refers to the English, as well as the foreign Reformation. Yet Dr. Pusey seems to adopt, as if with acquiescence, at all events without disapproval (Letter, p. 164, note) the following gratuitous addition to Mr. Froude's words, which he finds in one of the works he is reviewing: "The Reformation, every where but in England." One is thus led to suppose that these are Mr. Froude's words; or at least, that they are borne out by the general tenour of his sentiments. They are, however, not his words; and, as some extracts below will abundantly prove, are quite alien to his meaning. Dr. Pusey's (seeming) attempt to confine Mr. Froude's remarkable dictum to the Foreign Reformation (made, no doubt, with the amiable but very fruitless desire of conciliating certain objectors) was observed upon, some time back, by Dr. Elrington, in a Sermon on the Apostolical Succession. Probably Dr. Pusey was not aware that it had been noticed. At least, his note is reprinted verbatim in the fourth edition of his "Letter."

However, it is remarkable that Mr. Froude's editors have, in the preface to the Second Part of his "Remains," been at pains to obviate the suspicion of any desire, on their parts, to restrict Mr. Froude's language to the Continental Reformation. They speak (Rem. Part 2, Pref. p. xix.) of the "unfavourable mention made from time to time," in Mr. Froude's previously published writings, "of the Reformers as a party, and inclusively of the English reformers." And they proceed to identify themselves with the views of their friend upon this subject, by strong condemnation of the language and proceedings of the English Reformers in general, and especially of the author of the "Apology for the Church of England," from which work, and others VOL. XIX.-April, 1841. 3 G

himself, have in different ways intimated as the point of truth to which they would gradually lead us up. Take, for instance, a work like the "Church of the Fathers," (to confine ourselves to those which their respective authors have either openly avowed, or at least not disavowed when attributed to them.) Who can doubt that celibacy, monasticism, ecclesiastical independence, the power of the priesthood, intercession for the dead, ceremonial religion, and the like, are subjects very near the heart of the writer of that learned and interesting book; and only not more plainly brought out by him, because the temper of the age is not as yet quite ripe for them? Who, that walks about with his eyes wide open, can doubt that the medieval church is, by degrees, emerging into attractive prominence, and coming in for a share of the sympathy which for a time was limited to the earlier centuries? Who does not observe that Protestantism (no longer ultra-protestantism) is now called, by obvious implication, a heresy? (Vid. "Church of the Fathers," c. xv. and xvi. sub init.) And who cannot discover, as the natural consequence of these advances, a more friendly tone towards the church which has been consistently witnessing to such principles all these years that the Anglican church, as represented in the great majority of her divines, has been protesting alike against her and them?

That the movement which Oxford has set forward is on the advance, and that the system, in the revival of which certain of her divines have led the way, is every day developing itself into a clearer and more consistent shape, seems to the writer of these remarks among facts the most undeniable. The question now is, Where is it all to end? and this question is, after all, one which none of us can

answer.

In conclusion, let me express an earnest hope that nothing which has been said in the course of this letter will be construed into disrespect towards Dr. Pusey. It were hardly less presumptuous in an unknown person, or indeed in any person, to extol than to question the services which that eminent and revered divine has rendered to the cause of Christian truth. But it may still, perhaps, be permitted, even to an anonymous writer, to put it to him, should these remarks chance to meet his eye, whether by even appearing to make common cause with the meagre and contradictory theology of the Reformation, and by referring, without qualification or protest, to authors of so irreverent a tone as Bishop Jewell, no less than by the occasional harshness, if it may be said, of his language against the church of Rome, he be not obstructing, rather than advancing, his great object of union among all members of the true church upon the basis of pure Catholic doctrine? whether, in fact (with the most amiable intentions) he be not, through a natural but perhaps excessive fear of " popery," obscuring the aspect of catholic truth in the eyes of members of our own communion, whom he desires above all things to engage to it; impairing, as it were, the exact form of catholicism by rounding off its edges; beguiling a certain party (quite undesignedly) with the notion of (doctrinal) sympathy in quarters where it obviously does not and