ined
quite a number of converts, and made no slight impression at the
time. One of the writers in this controversy asserted that Luther
himself had been a believer in the death or sleep of the soul
until the day of judgment.9 Certain it is that such a belief had
at one period a considerable prevalence. Its advocates were called
Psychopannychians. Calvin wrote a vehement assault on them. The
opinion has sunk into general disrepute and neglect, and it would
be hard to find many avowed disciples of it. The nearly universal
sentiment of Christendom would now exclaim, in the quaint words of
Henry More,

"What! has old Adam snorted all this time Under some senselesse
clod, with sleep ydead?" 10

John Asgill printed, in the year 1700, a tract called "An argument
to prove that by the new covenant man may be translated into
eternal life without tasting death." He argues that the law of
death was a consequence of Adam's sin and was annulled by Christ's
sacrifice. Since that time men have died only because of an
obstinate habit of dying formed for many generations. For his
part, he has the independence and resolution to withstand the
universal pusillanimity and to refuse to die. He has discovered
"an engine in Divinity to convey man from earth to heaven." He
will "play a trump on death and show himself a match for the
devil!"

While treating of the various Protestant views of the future life,
it would be a glaring defect to overlook the remarkable doctrine
on that subject published by Emanuel Swedenborg and now held by
the intelligent, growing body of believers called after his name.
It would be impossible to exhibit this system adequately in its
scientific bases and its complicated details without occupying
more space than can be afforded here. Nor is this necessary, now
that his own works have been translated and are easily accessible
everywhere. His "Heaven and Hell," "Heavenly Arcana," "Doctrine of
Influx," and "True Christian

9 Blackburne, View of the Controversy Concerning an Intermediate
State: appendix. It is probable that the great Reformer's opinion
on this point was not always the same. For he says, distinctly,
"The first man who died, when he awakes at the last day, will
think he has been asleep but an hour" Beste, Dr. M. Luther's
Glaubenslehre, cap. iv.: Die Lehre von den Letzen Dingen. Yet. J.
S. Muller seems conclusively to prove the truth of the proposition
which forms the title of his book, "Dass Luther d