IN BEHALF OF THE VIEWS OF THE ETERNAL WORLD AND STATE, AND THE DOCTRINES OF FAITH AND LIFE, HELD BY THE BODY OF CHRISTIANS WHO BELIEVE THAT A NEW CHURCH, IS SIGNIFIED (IN THE REVELATION, CHAPTER XXI.) BY THE NEW JERUSALEM; EMBRACING ANSWERS TO ALL PRINCIPAL OBJECTIONS. BY THE REV. Sammel NOBLE, MINISTER OF THE NEW-JERUSALEM CHURCH, CROSS STREET, HATTON GARDEN, LONDON. "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables." 2 Peter i. 16. SECOND EDITION, ENTIRELY RE-MODELLED, AND MUCH ENLARGED. BOSTON: T. H. CARTER AND COMPANY, AND OTIS CLAPP. NOTICE. THE present Edition of this Work is a reprint entire of the last English Edition, without alteration or omission. J. B. CHISHOLM, PRINTER. 2 WATER STREET. Wash they Camphill 1-21-1932 PREFACE. THE Occasion and design of the following work are sufficiently explained in the Introductory Section; it is therefore unnecessary to say anything on those subjects here. In the former Edition, to save room, a large portion of the matter was thrown into the form of Notes; and a further portion was printed in very small type as an Appendix. Considerable inconvenience, however, resulted from this arrangement; and, when a new edition was called for, a very general wish was expressed that the Notes should be incorporated with the Text. This, therefore, with some exceptions, has now been done. If, however, the arrangement adopted in the first Edition had its inconveniences, it perhaps had its conveniences also. As remarked in the Preface to that Edition, those who prefer small books to large, especially on theological subjects, might, by that arrangement, gratify their taste, by confining their reading to the Text alone: if this should sufficiently interest them to raise a further appetite, they could then, if they pleased, read the Notes also. To retain, in the present Edition, an equivalent advantage, all the longer SECTIONS have been subdivided into distinct PARTS, each PART discussing some principal branch of the general subject of the SECTION. The whole work is thus divided into portions of moderate length, affording breaks at which the reader may conveniently pause. Readers, also, who would be alarmed at the idea of having to read so large a volume all through, may at first confine their perusal to those PARTS, in the subjects of which, as expressed by their titles, they feel most interest; and, if pleased with these, they can extend their reading further. But the Author hopes that none will conclude, from the perusal of some PARTS alone, that he has failed to establish his points; since the subject and argument of each PART of a SECTION usually receives light and confirmation from the rest; and the SECTIONS themselves, also, are similarly connected with each other. In the present Edition, as little as possible of the personal matter respecting the Rev. Mr. Beaumont, whose publication, intitled The Anti-Swedenborg, originally occasioned the composition of this work, has been retained. But the work being framed, as a principal object, to meet the common arguments and objections against the New Church, in the form in which those arguments and objections are stated in the Anti-Swedenborg, it was neither possible nor desirable to divest it of the form it had thus assumed. Mention of the Anti-Swedenborg and its objections is therefore retained; but only as a convenient formulary for objectors and objections in general. Beside the alteration of the form of this work in the present Edition by incorporating the Notes, large quantities of additional matter have been introduced. The Sections, in particular, on the Trinity, the Atonement, and the Christian Life, which, in the former Edition, to keep the whole within the prescribed limits, were greatly contracted, are now expanded to dimensions more in proportion to the other Sections, and less incommensurate with the importance of their subjects. Other large additions have also been interspersed throughout. By adopting a larger paper and a smaller type, nearly twice as much is contained in a page as in the text of the former edition; while the number of pages is nearly the same. Of the APPENDIX to the former Edition, there has only been retained the Article, No. 1, Various Particulars relating to Heaven and Hell, &c., Explained. The subjects of this Article are not sufficiently general to be introduced in the work itself; yet it will be found, on perusal, more completely to take away the ground of many common objections made against the writings of Swedenborg, and to evince that those writings. contain no statements whatever which cannot be rationally |