LATER PERIOD OF LIFE: CONCLUSION
once to receive the Holy Spirit, notwithstanding they were ignorant of one of the chief grounds of faith, and opposed to the Scripture. Does not Swedenborg place the Scripture higher than any one else? and does he not wish to have all experiences judged thereby? Is not all he says well connected? And does he not appeal to many witnesses?"
Referring to the first volume of the same philosophical work, in a letter of defence addressed to the Duke of Würtemberg, Oetinger says, "Thirty years previously I had studied Swedenborg's Principia Rerum Naturalium in folio, which I preferred much to Wolff's philosophy, on account of its leading to the Sacred Scripture. It is wonderful how a philosopher, who was accustomed to think according to rules of mechanics, should have become a prophet."
We have now shown the esteem for Swedenborg of two of the men named by Kürtz as the leading religious spirits of this period in Germany—Jung-Stilling and Oetinger. That of a third, Lavater, is sufficiently shown in two letters to Swedenborg, the second and shorter of which we here copy:—
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