new church life: jan uary/february 2015
“I bear true witness that the Lord has shown Himself in the presence
of me, His servant,” (True Christian Religion 779), an amanuensis for the
descent of the “Doctrine of the New Jerusalem” seen by John as the Holy
City, (Apocalypse Revealed 896), that city constituting “The Word in heaven,
…. Heaven’s Doctrine….. in these books.” (New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly
Doctrine 7)
Swedenborg had served on the Board of Mines so loyally, and with so
many publications, that the king, now Frederick I, offered him the post of
Director of the Board of Mines. Swedenborg, whose spiritual eyes had been
opened first in 1743, was by then, in 1747, well into his spiritual journey. He
had finished and printed the first two parts of the Worship and Love of God
(1745), which Samuel Coleridge later called the greatest poem ever written.
He had prepared for the Magnum Opus, the Arcana, by making several
unpublished studies.8 None of these, not even the largest one, The Word
Explained, (not the same as Apocalypse Explained), was ever printed. So,
after humbly declining the royal offer of Directorship at the Bergskollegium,
Swedenborg asked King Frederick instead for a half-salary pension, which was
readily granted.
By this time, Swedenborg had moved into his
new Hornsgatan quarters.9 Today a plaque on the
wall nearby commemorates his residence. When
he died in London, in 1772, eventually several
cart loads of his books and papers were trundled
off to the Royal Academy of Sciences. That sets
the stage for the Rules of Life. Samuel Sandels
was to give the eulogy. He began to examine
Swedenborg’s papers and somehow he extracted
from them the Rules of Life!
Samuel Sandels (1724-1784, ennobled
1772), a former colleague and fellow Assessor of
8 The Principia, 1736, dealing with Copper and Iron, plus anatomically inspired works, The Soul’s
Domain, its Economic working etc. – the Animal Kingdom to you seniors! The works never published,
preparing for the Arcana, were: The History of Creation, also called The Adversaria or Word Explained,
The Messiah About To Come, Index Biblicus – a vast alphabetical index of the internal sense; On Gad and
Asher, Schmidius Marginalia - notes he made in his Latin Bible margins, The Greek Religion, Experientiae
Spirituales or Spiritual Diary and De Miraculis. Swedenborg also renewed his studies in Hebrew.
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