653 



SWEDENBORG, EMANUEL. 



SWIFT, JONATHAN, D.D. 



854 



purpose of removing from man the powers of liell, and restoring to 

 order all things in the spiritual world, and all things in the church : 

 that he removed from man the powers of hell, by combats against 

 and victories over them; in which consisted the great work of redemp- 

 tion : that by the same acts, which were his temptations, the last of 

 which was the passion of the cross, he united, in hid humanity, divine 

 truth to divine good, or divine wisdom to divine love, and so returned 

 into his divinity in which he was from eternity, together with, and in, 

 his glorified humanity ; whence he for ever keeps the infernal powers 

 in subjection to himself : and that all who believe in him, with the 

 understanding, from the heart, and live accordingly, will be saved. 



" 3, That the Sacred Scripture, or Word of God, is divine truth 

 itself, containing a spiritual sense heretofore unknown, whence it is 

 divinely inspired and holy in every syllable; as well as a literal sense, 

 which is the basis of its spiritual sense, and in which divine truth is 

 in its fullness, its sanctity, and its power: thus that it is accommodated 

 to the apprehension both of angels and men : that the spiritual and 

 natural senses are united, by correspondences, like soul and body, 

 every natural expression and image answering to, and including, a 

 spiritual and divine idea ; and thus that the Word is the medium of 

 communication with heaven and of conjunction with the Lord. 



" 4, That the government of the Lord's divine love and wisdom is 

 the divine providence; which is universal, exercised according to 

 certain fixed laws of order, and extending to the minutest particulars 

 of the life of all men, both of the good and of the evil : that in all its 

 operations it has respect to what is infinite and eternal, and makes no 

 account of things transitory but as they are subservient to eternal 

 ends : thus, that it mainly consists, with man, in the connection of 

 things temporal with things eternal ; for that the continual aim of the 

 Lord, by his divine providence, is to join man to himself and himself 

 to man, that he may be able to give him the felicities of eternal life : 

 and that the laws of permission are also laws of the divine providence; 

 since evil cannot be prevented without destroying the nature of man as 

 an accountable agent ; and because, also, it cannot be removed unless 

 it be known, and cannot be known unless it appear : thus, that no evil 

 is permitted but to prevent a greater ; and all is overruled, by the 

 Lord's divine providence, for the greatest possible good. 



" 5, That man is not life, but is only a recipient of life from the 

 Lord, who, as he is love itself and wisdom itself, is also life itself; 

 which life is communicated by influx to all in the spiritual world, 

 whether belonging to heaven or to hell, and to all in the natural 

 world ; but is received differently by every one, according to his 

 quality and consequent state of reception. 



" 6, That man, during his abode in the world, is, as to his epirit, in 

 the midst between heaven and hell, acted upon by influences from 

 both, and thus is kept in a state of spiritual equilibrium between 

 good and evil ; in consequence of which he enjoys free will, or free- 

 dom of choice, in spiritual things as well as in natural, and possesses 

 the capacity of either turning himself to the Lord and his kingdom, 

 or turning himself away from the Lord and connecting himself with 

 the kingdom of darkness : and that, unless man had such freedom of 

 choice, the Word would be of no use; the church wuld be a mere 

 name ; man would possess nothing by virtue of which he could be 

 conjoined to the Lord ; and the cause of evil would be chargeable on 

 God himself. 



" 7, That man at this day is born into evil of all kinds, or with 

 tendencies towards it : that, therefore, in order to his entering the 

 kingdom of heaven, he must be regenerated or created anew ; which 

 great work in effected in a progressive manner, by the Lord alone, by 

 charity and faith as mediums, during man's co-operation ; that as all 

 men are redeemed, all are capable of being regenerated, and conse- 

 quently saved, every one according to his state ; and that the regene- 

 rate man is in communion with the angels of heaven, and the 

 unregenerate with the spirits of hell : but that no one is condemned 

 for hereditary evil, any further than as he makes it his own by actual 

 life; whence all who die in infancy are saved, special 'means being 

 provided by the Lord in the other life for that purpose. 



" 8, That repentance is the first beginning of the church in man ; 

 and that it consists in a man's examining himself, both in regard to 

 his deeds and his intentions, in knowing and acknowledging his sins, 

 confessing them before the Lord, supplicating him for aid, and begin- 

 ning a new life : that, to this end, all evils, whether ot affection, of 

 thought, or of life, are to be abhorred and shunned as sins against 

 God, and because they proceed from infernal spirits, who in the 

 aggregate are called the Devil and Satan ; ana that good affections, 

 good thoughts, and good actions are to be cherished and performed, 

 because they are of God and from God : that these things are to be 

 done by man as of himself; nevertheless, under the acknowledgement 

 and belief that it is from the Lord, operating in him and by him : 

 that so far as man shuns evils as sins, so far they are removed, 

 remitted, or forgiven : so far also he does good, not from himself, but 

 from the Lord ; and in the same degree he loves truth, has faith, 

 and is a spiritual man : and that the Decalogue teaches what evils 

 are sins. 



" 9, That charity, faith, and good works are unitedly necessary to 

 man's salvation, since charity, without faith, is not spiritual, but 

 natural ; and faith, without charity, is not living, but dead; and both 

 charity and faith, without good works, are merely mental and perish- 



able things, because without use or fixedness : and that nothing of 

 faith, of charity, or of good works is of man, but that all is of the 

 Lord, and all the merit is his alone. 



"10, That Baptism and the Holy Supper are sacraments of divine 

 institution, and are to be permanently observed : baptism being an 

 external medium of introduction into the church, and a sign repre- 

 sentative of man's purification and regeneration ; and the Holy Supper 

 being an external medium, to those who receive it worthily, of intro- 

 duction, as to spirit, into heaven, and of conjunction with the Lord; 

 of which also it is a sign and seal. 



"11, That immediately after death, which is only a putting off of 

 the material body, never to be resumed, man rises again in a spiritual 

 or substantial body, in which he continues to live to eternity: in 

 heaven, if his ruling affections, and thence his life, have been good ; 

 and in hell, if his ruling affections, and thence his life, have been 

 evil. 



" 12, That now is the time of the second advent of the Lord, which 

 is a coming, not in person, but iu the power and glory of his Holy 

 Word : that it is attended, like his first coming, with the restoration 

 to order of all things in the spiritual world, where the wonderful 

 divine operation, commonly expected under the name of the Last 

 Judgment, has in consequence been performed ;. and with the pre- 

 paring of the way for a New Church on the earth, the first Christian 

 Church having spiritually come to its end or consummation, through 

 evils of life and errors of doctrine, as foretold by the Lord in the 

 Gospels : and that this New or Second Christian Church, which will 

 be the Crown of all Churches, and will stand for ever, is what was repre- 

 sentatively seen by John, when he beheld the holy city, New Jerusa- 

 lem, descending from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned 

 for her husband." 



(For further particulars see Reports of the Society for Printing and 

 Publishing the Writings of the Hon. E. Swedenborg, London ; Reports 

 of the London Missionary and Tract Society of the New Jerusalem 

 Church ; Minutes of the General Conference of the New Church, sig- 

 nified by the New Jerusalem in the Revelation ; also Tafel, Magazin 

 fur die wahre Christliche Religion, pp. 1 to 70, Tubingen, 1841, which 

 contains an elaborate account of all the Swedenborgian periodicals.) 



SWIETEN, GERARD VAN, was born at Leyden in 1700. He 

 received his general education there and at Louvain, and studied 

 medicine at Leyden under Boerhaave, of whom he soon became the 

 favourite pupil, and by whose influence he was appointed to a pro- 

 fessorship of medicine very soon after taking his diploma of doctor in 

 1725. His lectures were well attended, but objections were made 

 against him on the ground of his being a Roman Catholic, and he was 

 obliged to resign his chair. In 1745 Maria Theresa of Austria 

 appointed him her first physician, and in this capacity he used his 

 influence to establish a system of clinical instruction at Vienna, to 

 rebuild the university, and accomplish many other important measures 

 for the advancement of science. During eight years also he lectured 

 on the 'Institutes' of Boerhaave. He died in 1772, and Maria Theresa, 

 who, besides many other honours, had made him a baron of the 

 empire, had a statue to his memory placed in the hall of the 

 university. 



Van Swieten was one of the few great physicians of his day, who, 

 though he founded a school (and that one of the most important of the 

 time), did not attempt to establish himself as the head of a sect. He 

 was content to adopt the system of Boerhaave ; in his commentaries 

 on whose aphorisms he has embodied the results of a most extensive 

 experience in clinical medicine, and has shown himself to have been a 

 physician of great erudition and of some practical merit. The work is 

 entitled ' Commeutaria in Hermanni Boerhaavii Aphorismos de cog- 

 noscendis et curandis inorbis ; ' it was first published at Leyden in 5 

 volumes, 4to, between 1741 and 1772; and has since been repeatedly 

 edited in Latin, English, French, and German. It consists of long 

 commentaries, not only on each aphorism, but on every portion of 

 each of them. To confirm their truth he introduces passages from 

 the writers of all preceding times and countries, and relates numerous 

 cases from his own and their practice. Van Swieten wrote treatises 

 also on the diseases of armies, on epidemics, and on the structure and 

 offices of arteries ; bub they are of little importance in comparison 

 with his commentaries, and are now seldom referred to. He main- 

 tained also a long opposition against the practice of inoculating 

 small-pox. 



SWIFT, JONATHAN, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, 

 Dublin, was descended from an ancient family which was originally 

 settled in Yorkshire. His grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Swift, was 

 vicar of Goodrich, in Herefordshire ; and had ten sons, Godwin, 

 Thomas, William, Dryden, Willoughby, Jonathan, Adam, and three 

 others, of whom Godwin, William, Jonathan, and Adam settled in 

 Ireland ; he had also four daughters. Dryden was named after his 

 mother, who was a near relation of Dryden the poet. Jonathan was 

 the father of the dean of St. Patrick's : he married Abigail Erick, of 

 an ancient family in Leicestershire, but poor. He was bred to the 

 law, and in 1665 was appointed steward of the King's Inns, Dublin. 

 He died in 1667, leaving his widow in great poverty, with an infant 

 daughter, and pregnant with the future dean of St. Patrick's. 



Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, November 30, 1667. When 

 about a year old he was carried to Whitekaven, in, Cumberland, by his 



