He carries his
controversial memory with him, in his visits to the souls. He is like
Michel Angelo, who, in his frescoes, put the cardinal who had offended
him to roast under a mountain of devils; or, like Dante, who avenged,
in vindictive melodies, all his private wrongs; or, perhaps still more
like Montaigne's parish priest, who, if a hailstorm passes over the
village, thinks the day of doom has come, and the cannibals already
have got the pip. Swedenborg confounds us not less with the pains of
Melancthon, and Luther, and Wolfius, and his own books, which he
advertises among the angels.
Under the same theologic cramp, many of his dogmas are bound. His
cardinal position in morals is, that evils should be shunned as sins.
But he does not know what evil is, or what good is, who thinks any
ground remains to be occupied, after saying that evil is to be shunned
as evil. I doubt not he was led by the desire to insert the element
of personality of Deity. But nothing is added. One man, you say, dreads
crysipelas,--show him that this dread is evil: or, one dreads
hell,--show him that dread is evil.
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