nature, this discussion would be protracted to a great length: I will therefore only mention, very briefly one or two more. We find him, then, in another place, saying, "For judgment am I come into this world."* And again, most explicitly, "Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out." It is acknowledged by all, that by the prince of this world is in Scripture meant the devil. Now it is very remarkable, that a casting out of Satan is elsewhere spoken of when the subject is respecting a General Judgment. Thus, in reference to this very judgment performed by the Lord while in the world, the prophet speaks of the falling of Lucifer from heaven. To the same effect, in reference to the Last Judgment generally believed to be yet future, John the Revelator declares, that he saw a great dragon cast out of heaven; and he explains this dragon to be that old serpent, called the devil and Satan. Just in the same manner the Lord says in Luke, when the disciples returned and told him that even the devils were subject unto them through his name, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." Evidently then, the circumstance described as the falling of Satan from heaven, is a thing essentially belonging to the performance of a General Judgment. Then put these facts together. John the Revelator says that such an occurrence would take place at the last judgment of all: Isaiah announced that it would take place at the judgment to be performed by the Lord while in the world: and Jesus himself twice declares, that it did then actually happen how then is it possible to retain any doubt, that the Lord Jesus Christ was actually engaged in performing a judgment in the spiritual world, while, as to his assumed human nature, he was personally present in this? Both parts-the latter as well as the former,-of our first proposition, may now, I trust, appear sufficiently established; -namely, That the General Judgment announced in Scripture as to be performed at the Second Coming of the Lord, was not to take place in the natural world, as commonly supposed, but in the spiritual. If the Last Judgment announced in the New Testament be not the only General Judgment ever accomplished on the natives of this earth, but, on the contrary, there have been two or three such before; then, doubtless, this would be executed in the same manner as those. It is certain that, at former judgments, particularly at the most indisputable of them, that performed by the Lord while in the world, there was no gathering together, in this world, of all who had previ * Ch. ix. 39 Isa. xiv. 12. See above, p. 137. § Rev. xii. 9. † Ch. xii. 31. || Luke x. 18. ously died, no appearing of the Judge in the clouds, and no destruction of the globe and of the visible universe: consequently, neither were such events to occur at the Last Judgment of all. All former General Judgments were executed in the spiritual world: consequently, that world must be the scene of the Last Judgment also. SECTION IV. THE LAST JUDGMENT. PART III. An Intermediate World and State the specific Scene of all The specific argument of the preceding PART of this SECTION, -That the Last Judgment was to be performed in the spiritual world, because there is evidence, that, though the last, it is not the first General Judgment on the natives of this globe, and that all former General Judgments have been performed in that world,—will be strongly corroborated if it can be shewn, in what specific region of the spiritual world such an operation could be performed; and that the existence of such a region, and of the execution in it of at least one former General Judgment, is no new invention, but, though of late lost sight of, was well known, and generally acknowledged, through all Christian antiquity. Into this subject, then, we will enter here; which will afford an opportunity fully to explain the views of the New Church, both with respect to the judgment performed on resuscitated men collectively at the close of the dispensations under which they have lived, and on resuscitated men individually at the close of this mortal life. We will first notice the necessity for such an intermediate world and state, and the Scripture-proof of its existence: and we will then advert to the knowledge anciently possessed on the subject, with various particulars respecting it. I. We are, first, to notice the necessity for such an intermediate world and state, and the Scripture-proof of its existence. Where, then, could any General Judgment be performed, but in some common receptacle, open to every spirit the mo ment he quits the body, and which, without being, itself, either heaven or hell, constitutes a world between both, and may serve as an introduction to either? Where, indeed, can any individual of the human race receive his judgment, either to heaven or to hell, but in some intermediate region, distinct both from the one and from the other? The Roman Catholics, it is well known, hold a kind of intermediate state, which they call purgatory. This they feign to be a place of severe torment, designed for purifying the souls of the good from the defilements adhering to the fleshly nature; and in which, it is pretended, they are liable to remain for thousands of years, unless delivered through the efficacy of the prayers of the saints and the papal indulgences, which are purchased by the credulous for that purpose. Upon a certain fact has thus been founded an extravagant fiction: hence Protestants have, for the most part, rejected the doctrine of an intermediate state altogether, discarding the truth along with the perversion. As observed by the accomplished Dr. Ť. Burnet, in his work, quoted in Sect. III., On the State of the Dead, "the reformed divines, to avoid the terrors of purgatory, have entirely taken away the intermediate state; as we are too apt, in avoiding one folly, to run into another." "It is very well known," he continues," that the Roman purgatory is adopted to the humours of the people and the gains of the priest: but why should these phantasms fright us away from the search of of truth, and the opinions of the ancients, concerning the hitherto unfulfilled state of misery and happiness, before the day of judgment?" Why, indeed! when it is an unquestionable fact, that the belief of an intermediate state of departed spirits, and of a world appropriated to their reception, was universal among Christians, as shall be shewn presently, long before the Romish purgatory was ever thought of. It is not then the extreme of rashness to abolish the belief of an intermediate state, because, under the reign of Romish corruption, it had been changed into purgatory? And is it not the extreme of injustice to charge the illustrious Swedenborg, as some of his opponents have done, with reviving the Romish purgatory, because he restores the older Christian and Spiritual doctrine of an intermediate state? To avoid confusion it may here be necessary to observe, that most Christians admit the doctrine of an intermediate state in one sense, meaning by it the state of the soul, after death, before it is reunited to the body; whence they also call it the separate state: But not looking for any resurrection of the body, we mean by the phrase, the state of man after death, before he is received into heaven or plunged into hell: consequently, our idea of it supposes an intermediate spiritual world, or region of the spiritual world at large, as being, in that state, the scene of his existence; which also results from our idea, that the spirit, separate from the body of clay, is not a mere vapour or puff of breath, but has a substantial body of its own, though, as consisting of spiritual and not of material substance, is not perceptible to the senses of men in this world. Our idea of this intermediate world is, that it is situated in the middle between heaven and hell. To those who are in it, heaven appears above, over their heads, and hell beneath, under their feet. Hence, the common forms of speaking of heaven and hell as being respectively above and below, which are completely void of meaning in reference to the natural world, are perfectly true in regard to the appearances of things in the spiritual world; and from knowledge respecting this, either intuitively perceived or traditionally retained, all such forms of speech derive their origin. Into this intermediate world, then, every one, we conceive, first enters after death, and makes a longer or a shorter stay in it, according to the conformity between his internal and his external state; though, from the moment of his leaving the body, his final doom is fixed irreversibly. Since the Last Judgment, this stay in the intermediate world is in no case very extensively protracted but prior thereto, the case was different, and many even remained there during the whole period that intervened between one General Judgment and another. Thus a General Judgment consists in the removal of the wicked from the stations they had there acquired to their abodes in hell; and in the elevation to heaven of certain of the good, who had been reserved, in the mean time, in places of safety, but who could not be taken up into heaven, till the wicked, who occupied the intermediate sphere, had been thence removed. These three propositions then,-1. That there is such an intermediate region of the spiritual world; 2. That at the time of the Judgment the wicked are removed from the stations they had there usurped; and, 3, That the good, having been previously reserved in places of safety, are then elevated into heaven; may be clearly proved by the testimony of the Scriptures. That such an intermediate state and world are supposed through the whole of the Old Testament is generally acknowledged by men of learning; though, forgetting that the writers of those books were guided by inspiration, it is but too common to imagine that they herein only followed their prejudices, and wrote in compliance with the vulgar belief of the Jewish nation. However, explain it away as they may, learned men are constrained to acknowledge, that the Hebrew word Sheol does not properly mean hell (in the common sense of that word), as it is translated in some passages of the English Bible, nor yet merely the grave, as it is translated in others, but that it means the place and state of the dead, or the abode and state of departed spirits, on their first leaving the body, and prior to their receiving their final judgment. The same idea, also, it is universally known, was attached (with some varieties) by the ancients in general, whether Jews, Christians, or heathens, to the Greek word Hades, the proper meaning of which is, the unseen world. This term often occurs in the New Testament, where it is always translated hell: but as, according to the observation of the ancient father called St. Augustine, it there appears to be commonly used to signify the abode and state hereafter of the wicked, I do not mention this as a proof of an intermediate world and state. In the New Testament use of the word, it seems usually to signify what we now call hell; but in its common use among the Greek writers in general, it certainly signified the state and abode of departed spirits in general, and, among Jews and Christians, their state prior to the last judgment, in a region distinct both from hell and heaven. But if the New Testament use of the word Hades does not prove the existence of an intermediate state, that part of Scripture contains many other statements which place it beyond dispute. For instance: We find John speaking* of certain "souls" that he "saw under the altar" importuning the Lord to accomplish the judgment; which is a plain allusion to a state which was neither hell nor heaven, and out of which those who were in it, though good, could not be taken, and elevated into heaven, till the judgment was performed, which, therefore, they were desirous should be effected thus we here have positive proof of the first and third of our propositions just above stated. And the same book (which treats, nearly throughout, either of the Last Judgment itself or of the preparations for it, and not of natural and historical events, a continued series of which the commentators have vainly, each in his own way, endeavoured to find in it ;-this book) supplies us with proof of our second proposition equally decisive. We read in chap. xii. of war being seen in heaven, and a great dragon being thence cast out into the earth; and in ch. xx., we are informed, that an angel came down from heaven, and laid hold of the dragon, and cast him from the earth into the bottomless pit. Now where could this heaven and earth be, but in the intermediate region of the spiritual world? Can we suppose that the dragon could have intruded into the heaven inhabited by angels, so as to make a war necessary to expel him? Even if we admit the common notion to be true,-that the present * Rev. vi. 9, 10, 11 |