agreeing together: for when it is said of the three that their substance or essence is one and indivisible, it does not remove the idea of three, but confounds it, because the expression is a metaphysical one, and the science of metaphysics, with all its ingenuity, cannot of three persons, each whereof is God, make one; it may indeed make of them one in the confession of the mouth, but never in the idea of the mind. That the whole system of Christian theology at this day is founded on an idea of three Gods, is evident from the doctrine of justification, which is the head of the doctrinals of the Christian church, both among Roman Catholics and Protestants. That doctrine sets forth that God the Father sent His Son to redeem and save mankind, and gives the Holy Spirit to operate the same: every man who hears, reads, or repeats this, cannot but in his thought, that is, in his idea, divide God into three, and suppose that one God sent another, and operates by a third. That the same thought of a Divine Trinity distinguished into three persons, each whereof is God, is continued throughout the rest of the doctrinals of the present church, as from a head into its body, will be demonstrated in its proper place. In the meantime consult what has been premised concerning justification, consult the system of theology in general and in particular, and at the same time consult yourself, while listening to sermons at church, or while praying at home, whether you have any other perception and thought thence resulting, than of three Gods; and especially while you are praying or singing first to one, and then to the other two separately, as is the common practice. Hence is established the truth of the proposition, that the whole system of theology in the Christian world at this day, is founded on an idea of three Gods."-Brief Expos. 34, 35.

It will be at once obvious, that upon the basis laid by Swedenborg, the entire economy of redemption is a totally different thing from that which has so long been held forth to the world as the true scheme of the Scriptures. The Atonement of Christ, according to him, is not a vicarious sacrifice, concentrated in the simple passion of the cross, and made by one person of the sacred Trinity to appease the wrath or satisfy the justice of another. As the Father and the Son are really one person, there can be no claims of justice or of any other attribute predicable of the one party which does not equally hold in regard to the other. There cannot possibly be any such conflict in the demands of the divine perfections as is implied in the prevalent theology of the church. It is the whole Deity which comes into incarnation with a view to save the whole human race, so far as it can be done without infraction on the freedom of the creature. There is no real wrath on the part of the Deity to be propitiated, for wrath is not predicable of a Being whose very essential nature is Love and Mercy; and if there were, how could the sufferings of a divine Personage, endured by himself alone, be an atonement or expiation in behalf of sinners ?* If a subject has offended a sovereign, and that sovereign submits to the loss of one of his eyes, how is that

*"By the wrath of God is signified evil among men, which, because it is against God, is called the wrath of God; not that God is angry with man, but because man in consequence of his evil is angry with God, and because it seems to man, when he is punished and tormented for it, as is the case after death in hell, to come from God, therefore in the Word, wrath and anger, yea, evil, is attributed te God; but this in the sense of the letter only, this sense being written according to appearances and correspondences, but not in the spiritual sense, for in this latter there is no appearance and correspondence but the truth is in its light."-Apoc. Rev. 658.

a satisfaction to the claims of justice? Do the sufferings of innocence cancel the debt of guilt?* The truth is, the current theory is built upon a view of the divine perfections which implies such a variance between them as is utterly irreconcilable with the essential unity of the Godhead. If the Son and the Father are essentially one, there is as much of wrath in the Son as there is in the Father, and as much of clemency in the Father as there is in the Son. They are perfectly at one in this respect, because they are one, and the alleged atonement made for sinners is a real at-one-ment, effected by the Lord's Divine Humanity between the sinning creature and the pure and holy Creator. By the light of the New Church teaching on this subject, we become aware of the huge inconsistencies of the current doctrine of Christendom touching this central credendum of revelation. With some exceptions the advocates of this doctrine profess with the mouth that God is one-that Jesus and Jehovah are the same and yet, from the imagined exigencies of the scheme of redemption, they have introduced a view of the Trinity which is completely subversive of that unity. And when the charge to this effect is preferred against it, the reply is usually made in the form of a foreclosure on the ground of ignorance. Let the question be proposed to a strenuous asserter of what is termed the orthodox creed on this head, how it is, precisely, that three persons are consistent with one essence, and how it is that the penal sufferings of the Son avail to turn away the ire of the Father from the heads of the guilty, and he will reply that he does not know-that it is an unfathomable mystery—that it was never intended to be known--that it is the height of presumption to think of requiring anything beyond the simple declaration of the fact on the divine authority—a fact which faith is implicitly to receive, and about which reason is to ask no questions.

Now the receiver of Swedenborg's revelations has no hesitation to say, that he recognizes no claim as being made by the inspired Word on his blind credence of any truth announced therein. He knows nothing of this absolute subjection of his understanding to his faith. Though he arrogates to himself no peculiar prerogative of intelligence above his fellow-men, yet he has an inward assurance that every doctrine propounded to his reception comes to him accompanied with a rational evidence of its truth, or in other words, that it establishes itself upon the rational plane of his mind-and while he does not assume to grasp the interior nature and essence of divine verities-while he holds to a needed illustration of his reason in conversing with spiritual themes-he yet feels authorized to look for an intelligible sense in which the Lord's being and working are announced to him. Such a sense he recognizes in what is affirmed of the economy of redemption.

On the prevalent system, the doctrine of vicarious atonement is central, cardinal, supreme; and out of it grows by legitimate issue the accredited dogma of

* Yet I beg it may not be inferred from this that the system in question does not recognize a moral antagonism between the state of the natural man and the attributes of the pure and holy Jehovah, one which must be removed before the soul can come into beatific conjunction with heaven. Evil and good are opposed to each other in their very nature, and to the apprehension of evil, good arrays itself in the aspect of wrath, just as the sun's light appears hostile to a diseased eye, though intrinsically as benignant to it as to a sound eye. The state of which this is the result must be rectified before man can come to the enjoyment of peace with God; and Swedenborg incessantly teaches that this rectification could never have taken place but upon the ground of Jehovah's becoming incarnate, and accomplishing what he did in our nature.

Justification by Faith alone. The efficacy of the atonement is secured, it is said, by the divine purpose in reference to a select (elect) number of the human race. Viewed in themselves they have no anterior claims to this merciful designation, nor have they any power of their own to avail themselves of the provision made for their salvation; for by reason of their depravity they are dead in trespasses and sins, and a dead man can no more move his little finger than his whole body.* In this emergency the discriminating grace of Heaven visits and regenerates them. They are enabled to believe on Christ set forth as a propitiation, and by this act of believing they are justified in the sight of God, and the law being satisfied by what Christ has done and suffered in their behalf, has no further demands upon them; they are henceforth fixed in a state of salvation, and at what is termed the last day, they are not judged according to works, but acquitted according to faith. It is indeed affirmed in this connexion that such a justification will he attended by a good life, but then the good life does not enter in as a constituent element into the real grounds of justification and salvation; they are rather a factitious adjunction to his faith, than a vital conjunction with it. A man is not saved for his good works, but in spite of his evil works. Having no merits of his own, he receives by imputation the merits of Christ, and standing complete in his righteousness, is adjudged to the fruition of eternal life.

To this view of the scheme of redemption the receiver of Swedenborg's teachings has serious objections. He objects to it as presenting the scheme mainly as an outward act-as a forensic transaction-as a procedure of an objective rather than of a subjective character. It so far, therefore, in his estimation overlooks the internal structure, nature, and wants of the human soul. It does not provide, in a clear and intelligible manner, for the deepest demands of the moral state of the sinner. It sets before him an ab extra work of atonement, which, while it is affirmed to satisfy the absolute will of Jehovah, does not satisfy the demands of internal consciousness. That men are actually regenerated, sanctified, and saved under this form of faith, they do not doubt; but such results they regard as rather not prevented, than directly promoted, by it.

No man,

* Here again I would put in a protest against an unwarrantable inference. of whatever school in theology, has ever given a more debasing view of our fallen nature, or insisted with more emphasis upon the entire depravity which has come upon it, than Swedenborg. "Every man is born," says he, "of his parents into the evils of the love of self and of the world. Every evil which by habit has contracted as it were a nature, is derived into the offspring; thus successively from parents, from grandfathers, and from great-grandfathers, in a long series backwards. Hence the derivation of evil is at length become so great, that all of man's proper life is nothing else but evil. This continued derived evil is not broken and altered except by the life of faith and charity from the Lord. Man continually inclines and lapses into what he derives hereditarily from his parents. Hence he confirms with himself that evil, and also of himself superadds more. These evils are altogether contrary to spiritual life; they destroy it; wherefore unless man, as to spiritual life, is by the Lord conceived anew, born anew, and educated anew, that is, is created anew, he is damned, for he wills nothing else, and hence thinks nothing else, but what is of hell."-(A. C. 8550-52). But though sunk in spiritual death, man is not bereft of freedom of will, and consequently is not absolutely passive in regeneration. He still has power to compel himself to abstinence from particular acts of evil as sins against God, and when this is the case the divine good of the Lord flows in, and as he yields to the influx he continually receives new accessions of life and strength, by which he is eventually enabled to "work out his salvation." "It is a law of order, that as far as man accedes and approaches to God, which he should as altogether from himself, so far God accedes and approaches to man, and in the midst of him conjoins Himself with him." As to the precise point, however, at which spiritual life begins, he would no more think of defining it than one would of discriminating the exact moment when the light of the morning first begins to break in upon the previous darkness.

What then, it will be asked, as contrasted with this, is the doctrine of the New Church on the same head? We answer, Salvation is heaven. Heaven is not a locality into which one enters as he does into a room when the door is open. It is an internal state which enters into him. Heaven is love, and love is life, and life is character. It is a state wrought in the individual by actuality, and not merely reckoned to his account by putative transfer. It is utterly impossible that one can enjoy the happiness of heaven without possessing the character of which heaven essentially consists. This character cannot be imparted to him by the simple virtue of any forensic accrediting or legal estimation. He must actually possess, in propria persona, the very righteousness by which he is saved, and consequently by which he is justified. The sinner can by no possibility be saved except by a process by which he ceases to be a sinner. This process, according to the New Church theology, is wrought in the person of the sinner. According to Old Church theology, it is wrought out of him, in and through another being, and the benefit of it becomes his by imputation.* Here is the grand point of divergency between the system of Swedenborg and that of the prevailing church. Still, we repeat, we do not charge the current system with overlooking the element of life in the matter of salvation. We do not say that it does not insist upon it as a necessary appendage to faith. But what we do say is, that it is not a fundamental and indispensable constituent of that internal state or character upon which the salvation of the sinner depends. It is, as the schoolmen say, a conditio cum qua, but not a conditio sine qua non.

Now to this, which we have given as the established dogma on this point, we oppose not only the express and reiterated declarations of our Lord, that judgment is to proceed, and destiny be determined, according to life, but also the absolute, inevitable, and eternal necessity of things. We contend that

The

"That it may be known that the imputation of the merit and righteousness of Jesus Christ is impossible, it is necessary to know what his merit and righteousness are. merit of our Lord the Saviour is redemption, and this was the subjugation of the hells, the establishment of order in the heavens, and afterwards the institution of a church; thus redemption was a work purely divine. Since redemption was a work purely divine, and of the Lord alone, and that is his merit, it follows, that this cannot be applied, ascribed, and imputed to any man, any more than the creation and preservation of the universe. Since, therefore, the merit and righteousness of the Lord are purely divine, and since things purely divine are such that, if they were applied and ascribed, man would die in an instant, and, like a fire-brand thrown into the naked sun, would be so consumed that scarcely any spark would remain of him; therefore the Lord with his Divine approaches to angels and to men by light tempered and moderated according to the faculty and quality of each, thus by what is adequate and accommodated; in like manner He approaches by heat. In the spiritual world there is a sun, in the midst of which is the Lord; from that sun He flows in by light and heat into the whole spiritual world, and into all who are there; all the light and all the heat there are thence. The Lord from that sun flows in with the same light and the same heat also into the souls and minds of men that heat in its essence is his divine love, and that light in its essence is his divine wisdom; this light and that heat the Lord adapts to the faculty and quality of the recipient angel and man, which is done by means of spiritual auras or atmospheres which convey and transfer them: the Divine itself, immediately encompassing the Lord, makes that sun. This sun is distant from the angels, as the sun of the natural world is from men, in order that it may not touch them with its naked rays, and thus immediately; for thus they would be consumed like a fire-brand thrown into the naked sun, as was said. Hence it may be evident, that the merit and righteousness of the Lord, because they are purely divine, cannot possibly be introduced by imputation into any angel or man; yea, if any drop of it, without being thus moderated, as was said, should touch them, they would instantly be tortured like those laboring with death, struggling with their feet, staring with their eyes, and they would expire. This was made known in the Israelitish church by this, that no one could see God and live."-T. C. R. 640, 641.

a sinner cannot be saved, even by omnipotence itself (though this is not the sphere of omnipotence), but upon the ground of the actual personal possession or that internal principle of good in which the very essence of salvation consists. At the same time we allow, on the ground of Swedenborg's teaching, no original merit to the sinner saved which is to be regarded as the effective procuring ground of his acceptance; for he has no good of his own; all is by influx from the Lord, who is Goodness itself and Life itself. Yet it is a goodness in the man, and not out of him, in virtue of which he is saved, for his salvation is the very goodness itself of which he becomes the subject. This goodness, moreover, could never have been acquired but by the mediation of the Divine Redeemer. There was an absolute necessity for the intervention of the God-man Mediator in order to the putting away of the obstacles which opposed the recovery of an apostate and ruined race to a new union with Him whose " favor is life and his loving-kindness better than life." In no other way could be effectted that infusion of divine good, righteousness, and peace which constitute the element of salvation. The dominion of hell was the impediment to be conquered. But the dominion of hell was the active agency of malignant evil spirits continually bearing down, by their infernal influx, upon the souls, and at length even upon the bodies, of men, and threatening to engulf them in a common perdition. According to the eternal laws of order Jehovah could approach neither to the evil spirits of earth or hell without the assumption of the Humanity, and the consequent creation of a medium of communication. "The reason," says Swedenborg, "that redemption could not have been performed but by God incarnate, that is, made man, is because Jehovah God, such as he is in his infinite essence, cannot approach to hell, much less enter into it; for he is in the purest and first things. Wherefore Jehovah God, being in himself such, if he should only blow upon those who are in hell, He would kill them in a moment.” He therefore acts upon all spirits according to their nature, and in a way to preserve inviolate their moral freedom. By assuming our infirm humanity he put himself into a condition that enabled him to receive their temptations into himself and to combat and overcome them in a mode somewhat analagous, though on an infinitely grander scale, to that by which the Christian combats and overcomes them in himself. The sum total of these conquests constituted his redemption-work. Every successive victory of this nature was at the same time a step in the glorification of his natural Human principle, till at last this process was consummated by the passion of the cross, which was the final act of temptation and suffering, when the entire Humanity became glorified, or, as we may say, divinified, just as, on a smaller scale, every spiritual triumph of a Christian goes in a degree to the sublimation and spiritualization even of his grosser nature, the final result of which may be seen in the glorified bodies of Moses and Elijah when they appeared with the transfigured Saviour on the holy mount. He is indeed unconscious of this inward process going on within him during life, nevertheless the fact is so, and the result of it is, that in the end his "vile body is fashioned like unto Christ's glorious body."

Now this we learn from Swedenborg was the sum and substance of what Jehovah Jesus accomplished in the work of man's redemption. It was to afford a medium by which a new communication of spiritual life could be vouchsafed to degenerate man, while at the same time no infraction should be made