Sect.  V. p. 286.

The next anecdote that I shall adduce is similar in its nature to the last * * *.  The relater is Dr. Stilling, Counsellor at the Court of the Duke of Baden, in a work entitled ‘Die Theorie der Geister-Kunde’, printed in 1808.

Mr. Noble is a man of too much English good sense to have relied on Sung’s (’alias’ Dr. Stilling’s) testimony, had he ever read the work in which this passage is found.  I happen to possess the work; and a more anile, credulous, solemn fop never existed since the days of old Audley.  It is strange that Mr. Noble should not have heard, that these three anecdotes were first related by Immanuel Kant, and still exist in his miscellaneous writings.

Ib. p. 315.

“Can he be a sane man who records the subsequent reverie as matter of fact?  The Baron informs us, that on a certain night a man appeared to him in the midst of a strong shining light, and said, ’I am God the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer; I have chosen thee to explain to men the interior and spiritual sense of the Sacred Writings:  I will dictate to thee what thou oughtest to write?’ From this period, the Baron relates he was so illumined, as to behold, in the clearest manner, what passed in the spiritual world, and that he could converse with angels and spirits as with men,” &c.

I remember no such passage as this in Swedenborg’s works.  Indeed it is virtually contradicted by their whole tenor.  Swedenborg asserts himself to relate ’visa et audita’,—­his own experience, as a traveller and visitor of the spiritual world,—­not the words of another as a mere ‘amanuensis’.  But altogether this Gulielmus must be a silly Billy.

Ib. p. 321.

The Apostolic canon in such cases is, ’Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God’. (1 John iv. 1.) And the touchstone to which they are to be brought is pointed out by the Prophet:  ’To the law and to the testimony:  if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no truth in them.’ (Is. viii. 20.) But instead of this canon you offer another * * *.  It is simply this:  Whoever professes to be the bearer of divine communications, is insane.  To bring Swedenborg within the operation of this rule, you quote, as if from his own works, a passage which is nowhere to be found in them, but which you seem to have taken from some biographical dictionary or cyclopaedia; few or none of which give anything like a fair account of the matter.

Aye! my memory did not fail me, I find.  As to insanity in the sense intended by Gulielmus, namely, as ’mania’,—­I should as little think of charging Swedenborg with it, as of calling a friend mad who laboured under an ‘acyanoblepsia’.

Ib. p. 323.