EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
by which we understand him to mean the flamy sign that appeared to him as a confirmation of what was true. To others again he appends, on stating what he is going to do, "So I seem ordered." Still his struggles go on:—
"How I resisted the power of the Holy Spirit, and what took place afterward. The hideous spectres which I saw, without life—they were terrible; although bound, they kept moving in their bands. They were in company with an animal by which I and not the child was attacked. It seemed to me as if I were lying on a mountain below which was an abyss; knots were on it. I was lying there trying to hold myself up, holding on to a knot, without foothold, and an abyss underneath. This signifies that I desire to rescue myself from the abyss, which yet is not possible."
That is to say, as we understand, the abyss of natural, selfish will, out of which we are to be rescued by the Divine grace, but not possibly by our own power. In March he dreams again of the abyss, into which there is danger of falling unless he receive help.
In April, "the day before Easter, I experienced nothing the whole night, although I repeatedly
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