EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
did for the disciples, before giving to them the bread and the wine that represented His own life, was to wash their feet, that they might be clean every whit. So too, Swedenborg tells us, those who are internally prepared for heaven and who have been delivered from all evil except that which belongs to the infirmities of the body, are taken up into heaven immediately after death. That from this time forth he himself enjoyed a remarkable protection from spirits who would have excited vain thoughts about his own works and the grace vouchsafed him, is manifest in everything he wrote, if we except a certain floridity of style in this work already in hand on the Worship and Love of God, in which he himself later detected "somewhat of egotism." Dr. Wilkinson well says of the change that now came over him—
"Certainly, in turning from his foregone life to that which now occupies us, we seem to be treating of another person—of one on whom the great change has passed, who has tasted the blessings of death and disburdened his spiritual part, of mundane cares, sciences, and philosophies. The spring of his lofty flights in nature sleeps in
174
