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The Argument



Rintrah roars, and shakes his fires in the burdend air; Hungry clouds swag on the deep. Once meek, and in a perilous path, The just man kept his course along The vale of death. Roses are planted where thorns grow, And on the barren heath Sing the honey bees. Then the perilous path was planted, And a river and a spring On every cliff and tomb, And on the bleachèd bones Red clay brought forth; Till the villain left the paths of ease, To walk in perilous paths, and drive The just man into barren climes. Now the sneaking serpent walks In mild humility, And the just man rages in the wilds Where lions roam. Rintrah roars, and shakes his fires in the burdend air; Hungry clouds swag on the deep. (Engraved1790)The Argument

A S a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent, the Eternal Hell revives. And Io! Swedenborg is the Angel sitting at the tomb: his writings are the linen clothes folded up. Now is the dominion of Edom, and the return of Adam into Paradise. See Isaiah xxxiv and xxxv chap. 1 Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. 2 From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. 3 Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell. 4 The Voice of the Devil

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors: 5 1. That Man has two real existing principles, viz. a Body and a Soul. 6 2. That Energy, calld Evil, is alone from the Body; and that Reason, calld Good, is alone from the Soul. 7 3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies. 8 But the following Contraries to these are True: 9 1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. 10 2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. 11 3. Energy is Eternal Delight. 12 Those who restrain Desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or Reason usurps its place and governs the unwilling. 13 And being restrained, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of Desire. 14 The history of this is written in Paradise Lost, and the Governor or Reason is calld Messiah. 15 And the original Archangel, or possessor of the command of the Heavenly Host, is calld the Devil or Satan, and his children are calld Sin and Death. 16 But in the Book of Job, Miltons Messiah is called Satan. 17 For this history has been adopted by both parties. 18 It indeed appeard to Reason as if Desire was cast out; but the Devils account is, that the Messiah fell, and formed a Heaven of what he stole from the Abyss. 19 This is shown in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the Comforter, or Desire, that Reason may have Ideas to build on; the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire. 20 Know that after Christs death, he became Jehovah. 21 But in Milton, the Father is Destiny, the Son a Ratio of the five senses, and the Holy-ghost Vacuum! 22 Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet, and of the Devils party without knowing it. 23 A Memorable Fancy

As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity, I collected some of their Proverbs; thinking that as the sayings used in a nation mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell show the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments. 24 When I came home, on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat-sided steep frowns over the present world, I saw a mighty Devil, folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock: with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now perceived by the minds of men, and read by them on earth: How do you know but evry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense World of Delight, closd by your senses five? 25 Proverbs of Hell

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. 26 Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead. 27 The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. 28 Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. 29 He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. 30 The cut worm forgives the plough. 31 Dip him in the river who loves water. 32 A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. 33 He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star. 34 Eternity is in love with the productions of time. 35 The busy bee has no time for sorrow. 36 The hours of folly are measurd by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure. 37 All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap. 38 Bring out number, weight, and measure in a year of dearth. 39 No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings. 40 A dead body revenges not injuries. 41 The most sublime act is to set another before you. 42 If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. 43 Folly is the cloak of knavery. 44 Shame is Prides cloak. 45 Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion. 46 The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. 47 The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. 48 The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. 49 The nakedness of woman is the work of God. 50 Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps. 51 The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man. 52 The fox condemns the trap, not himself. 53 Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth. 54 Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep. 55 The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. 56 The selfish, smiling fool, and the sullen, frowning fool shall be both thought wise, that they may be a rod. 57 What is now proved was once only imagind. 58 The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit watch the roots; the lion, the tiger, the horse, the elephant watch the fruits. 59 The cistern contains: the fountain overflows. 60 One thought fills immensity. 61 Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you. 62 Everything possible to be believd is an image of truth. 63 The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow. 64 The fox provides for himself; but God provides for the lion. 65 Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night. 66 He who has sufferd you to impose on him, knows you. 67 As the plough follows words, so God rewards prayers. 68 The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. 69 Expect poison from the standing water. 70 You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. 71 Listen to the fools reproach! it is a kingly title! 72 The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth. 73 The weak in courage is strong in cunning. 74 The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow; nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey. 75 The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest. 76 If others had not been foolish, we should be so. 77 The soul of sweet delight can never be defild. 78 When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius; lift up thy head! 79 As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys. 80 To create a little flower is the labour of ages. 81 Damn braces. Bless relaxes. 82 The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest. 83 Prayers plough not! Praises reap not! 84 Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not! 85 The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands and feet Proportion. 86 As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible. 87 The crow wishd everything was black, the owl that everything was white. 88 Exuberance is Beauty. 89 If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning. 90 Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of Genius. 91 Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires. 92 Where man is not, nature is barren. 93 Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believd. 94 Enough! or Too much. 95 The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive. 96 And particularly they studied the Genius of each city and country, placing it under its Mental Deity; 97 Till a System was formed, which some took advantage of, and enslavd the vulgar by attempting to realise or abstract the Mental Deities from their objectsthus began Priesthood; 98 Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. 99 And at length they pronouncd that the Gods had orderd such things. 100 Thus men forgot that All Deities reside in the Human breast. 101 A Memorable Fancy

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, and so be the cause of imposition. 102 Isaiah answerd: I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discoverd the infinite in everything, and as I was then persuaded, and remain confirmd, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote. 103 Then I asked: Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so? 104 He replied: All Poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything. 105 Then Ezekiel said: The philosophy of the East taught the first principles of human perception. Some nations held one principle for the origin, and some another: we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle and all the others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the Priests and Philosophers of other countries, and prophesying that all Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours and to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius. It was this that our great poet, King David, desired so fervently and invokes so pathetically, saying by this he conquers enemies and governs kingdoms; and we so loved our God, that we cursed in his name all the Deities of surrounding nations, and asserted that they had rebelled. From these opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject to the Jews. 106 This, said he, like all firm persuasions, is come to pass; for all nations believe the Jews code and worship the Jews god, and what greater subjection can be? 107 I heard this with some wonder, and must confess my own conviction. After dinner I askd Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works; he said none of equal value was lost. Ezekiel said the same of his. 108 I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years. He answerd: The same that made our friend Diogenes, the Grecian. 109 I then asked Ezekiel why he ate dung, and lay so long on his right and left side. He answerd, The desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite: this the North American tribes practise, and is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification? 110 The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell. 111 For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life; and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt. 112 This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment. 113 But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid. 114 If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. 115 For man has closed himself up till he sees all things thro narrow chinks of his cavern. 116 A Memorable Fancy

I was in a Printing-house in Hell, and saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation. 117 In the first chamber was a Dragon-Man, clearing away the rubbish from a caves mouth; within, a number of Dragons were hollowing the cave. 118 In the second chamber was a Viper folding round the rock and the cave, and others adorning it with gold, silver, and precious stones. 119 In the third chamber was an Eagle with wings and feathers of air: he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite. Around were numbers of Eagle-like men who built palaces in the immense cliffs. 120 In the fourth chamber were Lions of flaming fire, raging around and melting the metals into living fluids. 121 In the fifth chamber were Unnamed forms, which cast the metals into the expanse. 122 There they were received by Men who occupied the sixth chamber, and took the forms of books and were arranged in libraries. 123 The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence, and now seem to live in it in chains, are in truth the causes of its life and the sources of all activity; but the chains are the cunning of weak and tame minds which have power to resist energy. According to the proverb, the weak in courage is strong in cunning. 124 Thus one portion of being is the Prolific, the other the Devouring. To the Devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains; but it is not so, he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the whole. 125 But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific unless the Devourer, as a sea, received the excess of his delights. 126 Some will say: Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer: God only Acts and Is, in existing beings or Men. 127 These two classes of men are always upon earth, and they should be enemies: whoever tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence. 128 Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two. 129 Note. Jesus Christ did not wish to unite, but to separate them, as in the Parable of sheep and goats! And He says: I came not to send Peace, but a Sword. 130 Messiah or Satan or Tempter was formerly thought to be one of the Antediluvians who are our Energies. 131 A Memorable Fancy

An Angel came to me and said: O pitiable, foolish young man! O horrible! O dreadful state! Consider the hot, burning dungeon thou art preparing for thyself to all Eternity, to which thou art going in such career. 132 I said: Perhaps you will be willing to show me my eternal lot, and we will contemplate together upon it, and see whether your lot or mine is most desirable. 133 So he took me thro a stable, and thro a church, and down into the church vault, at the end of which was a mill. Thro the mill we went, and came to a cave. Down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way, till a void boundless as a nether sky appeard beneath us, and we held by the roots of trees, and hung over this immensity. But I said: If you please, we will commit ourselves to this void, and see whether Providence is here also. If you will not, I will. But he answerd: Do not presume, O young man, but as we here remain, behold thy lot which will soon appear when the darkness passes away. 134 So I remaind with him, sitting in the twisted root of an oak. He was suspended in a fungus, which hung with the head downward into the deep. 135 By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke of a burning city; beneath us, at an immense distance, was the sun, black but shining; round it were fiery tracks on which revolvd vast spiders, crawling after their prey, which flew, or rather swum, in the infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals sprung from corruption; and the air was full of them, and seemd composed of themthese are Devils, and are called Powers of the Air. I now asked my companion which was my eternal lot? He said: Between the black and white spiders. 136 But now, from between the black and white spiders, a cloud and fire burst and rolled thro the deep, blackening all beneath; so that the nether deep grew black as a sea, and rolled with a terrible noise. Beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest, till looking East between the clouds and the waves we saw a cataract of blood mixed with fire, and not many stones throw from us appeard and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent. At last, to the East, distant about three degrees, appeard a fiery crest above the waves. Slowly it reared like a ridge of golden rocks, till we discoverd two globes of crimson fire, from which the sea fled away in clouds of smoke; and now we saw it was the head of Leviathan. His forehead was divided into streaks of green and purple like those on a tigers forehead. Soon we saw his mouth and red gills hang just above the raging foam, tinging the black deep with beams of blood, advancing toward us with all the fury of a Spiritual Existence. 137 My friend the Angel climbd up from his station into the mill: I remaind alone, and then this appearance was no more; but I found myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river, by moonlight, hearing a harper, who sung to the harp; and his theme was: The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. 138 But I arose and sought for the mill, and there I found my Angel, who, surprised, asked me how I escaped. 139 I answerd: All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics; for when you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight hearing a harper. But now we have seen my eternal lot, shall I show you yours? He laughd at my proposal; but I, by force, suddenly caught him in my arms, and flew westerly thro the night, till we were elevated above the earths shadow; then I flung myself with him directly into the body of the sun. Here I clothed myself in white, and taking in my hand Swedenborgs volumes, sunk from the glorious clime, and passed all the planets till we came to Saturn. Here I stayd to rest, and then leapd into the void between Saturn and the fixed stars. 140 Here, said I, is your lot, in this spaceif space it may be calld. Soon we saw the stable and the church, and I took him to the altar and opend the Bible, and lo! it was a deep pit, into which I descended, driving the Angel before me. Soon we saw seven houses of brick. One we enterd; in it were a number of monkeys, baboons, and all of that species, chaind by the middle, grinning and snatching at one another, but withheld by the shortness of their chains. However, I saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then the weak were caught by the strong, and with a grinning aspect, first coupled with, and then devourd, by plucking off first one limb and then another, till the body was left a helpless trunk. This, after grinning and kissing it with seeming fondness, they devourd too; and here and there I saw one savourily picking the flesh off of his own tail. As the stench terribly annoyd us both, we went into the mill, and I in my hand brought the skeleton of a body, which in the mill was Aristotles Analytics. 141 So the Angel said: Thy phantasy has imposed upon me, and thou oughtest to be ashamed. 142 I answerd: We impose on one another, and it is but lost time to converse with you whose works are only Analytics. 143 I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the Only Wise. This they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning. 144 Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; tho it is only the Contents or Index of already publishd books. 145 A man carried a monkey about for a show, and because he was a little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conceivd himself as much wiser than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg: he shows the folly of churches, and exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are religious, and himself the single one on earth that ever broke a net. 146 Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth. Now hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods. 147 And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are all religious, and conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he was incapable thro his conceited notions. 148 Thus Swedenborgs writings are a recapitulation of all superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublimebut no further. 149 Have now another plain fact. Any man of mechanical talents may, from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborgs, and from those of Dante or Shakespear an infinite number. 150 But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine. 151 A Memorable Fancy

Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire, who arose before an Angel that sat on a cloud, and the Devil utterd these words: 152 The worship of God is: Honouring his gifts in other men, each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best: those who envy or calumniate great men hate God; for there is no other God. 153 The Angel hearing this became almost blue; but mastering himself he grew yellow, and at last white, pink, and smiling, and then replied: 154 Thou Idolater! is not God One? and is not he visible in Jesus Christ? and has not Jesus Christ given his sanction to the law of ten commandments? and are not all other men fools, sinners, and nothings? 155 The Devil answerd: Bray a fool in a mortar with wheat, yet shall not his folly be beaten out of him. If Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love Him in the greatest degree. Now hear how He has given His sanction to the law of ten commandments. Did He not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbaths God; murder those who were murderd because of Him; turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery; steal the labour of others to support Him; bear false witness when He omitted making a defence before Pilate; covet when He prayd for His disciples, and when He bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments. Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules. 156 When he had so spoken, I beheld the Angel, who stretched out his arms, embracing the flame of fire, and he was consumed, and arose as Elijah. 157 Note.This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my particular friend. We often read the Bible together in its infernal or diabolical sense, which the world shall have if they behave well. 158 I have also The Bible of Hell, which the world shall have whether they will or no. 159 One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression. 160 CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD PREVIOUS NEXT

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