ple, Philo says, (vol. i. p. 494,)
"Man is a small kosmos, the kosmos is a grand man."

ruling affection determines his destiny, and that affection can
never be extirpated or changed to all eternity. After death, evil
life cannot in any manner or degree be altered to good life, nor
infernal love be transmuted to angelic love, inasmuch as every
spirit from head to foot is in quality such as his love is, and
thence such as his life is, so that to transmute this life into
the opposite is altogether to destroy the spirit. It were easier,
says Swedenborg, to change a night bird into a dove, an owl into a
bird of paradise, than to change a subject of hell into a subject
of heaven after the line of death has been crossed. But why the
crossing of that line should make such an infinite difference he
does not explain; nor does he prove it as a fact.

The moral reason and charitable heart of Swedenborg vehemently
revolted from the Calvinistic doctrines of predestination and
vicarious atonement, and the group of thoughts that cluster around
them. He always protests against these dogmas, refutes them with
varied power and consistency; and the leading principles of his
own system are creditable to human nature, and attribute no
unworthiness to the character of God. A debt of eternal gratitude
is due to Swedenborg that his influence, certainly destined to be
powerful and lasting, is so clearly calculated to advance the
interests at once of philosophic intelligence, social affection,
and true piety. The superiorities of his view of the future life
over those which it seeks to supplant are weighty and numerous.
The following may be reckoned among the most prominent.

First, without predicating of God any aggravated severity or
casting the faintest shadow on his benevolence, it gives us the
most appalling realization of the horribleness of sin and of its
consequences. God is commonly represented in effect, at least as
flaming with anger against sinners, and forcibly flinging them
into the unappeasable fury of Tophet, where his infinite vengeance
may forever satiate itself on them. But, Swedenborg says, God is
incapable of hatred or wrath: he casts no one into hell; but the
wicked go where they belong by their own election, from the
inherent fitness and preference of their ruling love. The evil man
desires to be in hell because there he finds his food, employment,
and home; in heaven he would suffer unutterable agonies from every
c