Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/137

Swedenborg lays the axe at the root of this pernicious tree. He announces himself as the herald of a New Dispensation—a dispensation of rational religious truth; and throughout his writings he insists on the freest and most faithful exercise of the understanding in matters of faith. He repudiates, as a false and pernicious dogma, the prevalent idea of his day, that religious doctrines were not to be subjected to the scrutiny of reason, or brought within the grasp of the intellect; and insists that spiritual truth should be seen, or received rationally. Speaking of the New Church whose dawn he heralded, and whose doctrines he claims to have been specially commissioned to reveal, he says:

"In the New Church this tenet, that the undertanding must be kept in subjection to faith, is to be rejected; and in place of it this is to be received as a maxim, that the truth of the church should be seen before it is received; and truth cannot be seen otherwise than rationally. . . . Who can acknowledge truth and retain it unless he sees it? And what is truth not seen but a voice not understood?" (A. R. n. 564.)

And everywhere throughout his writings he insists on the importance of receiving truth rationally; that is, of exercising our reason on whatever is presented us for religious truth, or of seeing it with the eye of the mind before we accept