it is nevertheless true that he is a prisoner, and that I have spoken respecting him with the late pope."
Cuno did not contradict him. Cuno was not so worried by Swedenborg's stories of the other world, he said, nor even by Swedenborg's claim that he was an "entirely new teacher." What worried Cuno extremely was that the old gentleman would "teach things contrary to old truths, which, however, to my great sorrow, he frequently does."
Even from liberal Amsterdam people had been banished who came out too vigorously against the received Christian dogmas, and Cuno was cautious, as well as a true believer in the dogmas. When Swedenborg announced that he was going to publish a brief summary of the doctrines of the New Church, Cuno was thoroughly alarmed and begged him to postpone it, "or you will expose yourself to the danger of being banished from the city."
Swedenborg nevertheless published his little book, and, to Cuno's intense surprise, the clergy seemed to take no notice of it, though they had busily refuted a far less worthy antagonist, as Cuno judged him.
It does not surprise the modern reader that the clergy had nothing to say against Swedenborg's Summary Exposition of the Doctrine of the New Church. Perhaps it was because they regarded a spirit-seer as beneath their notice; more likely it was because Swedenborg was very difficult to refute. For the book which Cuno had so dreaded was a dreadful book. Both Catholics and Protestants might have risen up in horror and burned Swedenborg as Calvin did Servetus, for in this short, dry treatise he knocked all their dogmatic heads together, making them sound like empty barrels, so far as any ethical foundation for their theologies was concerned.
Out of their own words he did it; quoting from the Council of Trent in regard to the Roman Catholics, and from the Augsburg Confession and the "Formula Concordia" in regard to the Protestants. He asserted that in spite of apparent differences both sides really taught the same things: a Trinity of persons in the Godhead, original sin, the imputation of the merit of Christ and justification by faith therein—the only difference being, as he saw it, that the Catholics did insist that faith be joined with charity or good works.
Both sides were wrong, he said; if anything the Protestants a
