er-Kunde',
printed in 1808.

Mr. Noble is a man of too much English good sense to have relied on
Sung's ('alias' Dr. Stilling's) testimony, had he ever read the work in
which this passage is found. I happen to possess the work; and a more
anile, credulous, solemn fop never existed since the days of old Audley.
It is strange that Mr. Noble should not have heard, that these three
anecdotes were first related by Immanuel Kant, and still exist in his
miscellaneous writings.

Ib. p. 315.

"Can he be a sane man who records the subsequent reverie as matter of
fact? The Baron informs us, that on a certain night a man appeared to
him in the midst of a strong shining light, and said, 'I am God the
Lord, the Creator and Redeemer; I have chosen thee to explain to men
the interior and spiritual sense of the Sacred Writings: I will
dictate to thee what thou oughtest to write?' From this period, the
Baron relates he was so illumined, as to behold, in the clearest
manner, what passed in the spiritual world, and that he could converse
with angels and spirits as with men," &c.

I remember no such passage as this in Swedenborg's works. Indeed it is
virtually contradicted by their whole tenor. Swedenborg asserts himself
to relate 'visa et audita',--his own experience, as a traveller and
visitor of the spiritual world,--not the words of another as a mere
'amanuensis'. But altogether this Gulielmus must be a silly Billy.

Ib. p. 321.

The Apostolic canon in such cases is, 'Believe not every spirit, but
try the spirits whether they be of God'. (1 John iv. 1.) And the
touchstone to which they are to be brought is pointed out by the
Prophet: 'To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according
to this word, it is because there is no truth in them.' (Is. viii.
20.) But instead of this canon you offer another * * *. It is simply
this: Whoever professes to be the bearer of divine communications, is
insane. To bring Swedenborg within the operation of this rule, you
quote, as if from his own works, a passage which is nowhere to be
found in them, but which you seem to have taken from some biographical
dictionary or cyclopaedia; few or none of which give anything like a
fair account of the matter.

Aye! my memory did not fail me, I find. As to insanity in the sense
intended by Gulielmus, namely, as 'mania',--I should as little think of
charging Swedenborg with it, as of calling a friend