ANSWER TO A LETTER FROM A FRIEND I rejoice in the friendship to which you testify in your letter; for both of them, for your letter, but especially for your friendship, I offer you my sincere thanks. The praises which you heap up upon me I accept only as arising from your love of the truths to be found in my writings; and as that is their origin I redirect them to the Lord our Savior from Whom all truth comes since He is the Truth itself, John xiv 6. I have applied my mind to those matters you write of towards the end, namely these:

If perhaps after your departure from England discussion about your writings should occur, and at the same time too the need arises to defend you, their author, against any hostile critic who is quick to invent lies and wound your reputation, as certain of those who hate the truth are wont to do, would it not serve to refute such slanders if you left with me some details about yourself, about your university degrees, about the official positions you have held, about your acquaintances and relatives, about the honors which, so I have heard, you have received, and about all the other things which could serve to uphold your good name. Thus ill-founded prejudices may be banished, for one ought to employ every lawful means to prevent the truth being harmed in any way.

After reflecting on these matters I have been led to accept your kindly advice, that is, to communicate to you some facts about my own life which briefly are these:

Everyone in my own country is eagerly awaiting my return and I have therefore not the slightest fear of persecution there of which you have some suspicion and over which you advise me in a most kindly way in your letter. If men persecute me in other lands that does me no harm. But considerations such as these I take to be of little importance, relatively speaking, for what exceeds them in importance is the fact that I have been called by the Lord Himself to a sacred duty. Of His great goodness He presented Himself in Person to me His servant before my very eyes, in the year 1743, and at that time He opened my sight for me to see into the spiritual world and has allowed me to converse with spirits and angels, which has continued until this day. From that time I began to publish in print the various arcana that I have seen and that have been revealed to me, such as those concerning heaven and hell, men's state after death, true Divine worship, the spiritual sense of the Word, besides other most valuable matters that contribute to salvation and wisdom. I have frequently journeyed from my own country to foreign parts, for no other reason than a desire to be of service and to disclose the arcana that have been entrusted to me. Moreover I have wealth in sufficient quantity, and I neither seek nor desire more. I am led by your letter to record these details in order that, as you put it, ill-founded prejudices may be banished. Farewell. From my heart I wish you all happiness in this world and in the world to come, which I doubt not at all will be yours if you are looking and praying to our Lord.

London, 5th August 1769. Eman. Swedenborg

I rejoice in the friendship to which you testify in your letter written to me; for both of them, your letter and your friendship, I offer you my thanks. Continue, I beseech you, in the truth of faith you have embraced.

As for the dual Humanity that was in Christ, you can see what it was like from the explanation given in n. 117 Of BRIEF EXPOSITION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE NEW CHURCH which you have in your possession. The Humanity He had already was the Divine Celestial Humanity, while the second was the natural Humanity He took to Himself to fight against the hells and to restore to order everything in them and in the heavens, and on earth as well. He also took this second Humanity to Himself to be more nearly present and within men in the world, all of whom are natural. The Divine Celestial Humanity was inwardly in the Lord when He was in the world, and He drew upon it as much as He pleased, especially when He worked miracles; but He hid it away within Himself when He underwent temptations, most of all when He endured the cross, and on every such occasion as He was in a state of exinanition. Afterwards He fully united this Human to His Divine Celestial, and this state in His state of glorification. From these few considerations you can see what is understood by these words of His:

Father, glorify Me with the glory I had before the foundation of the world.

In a state of exinanition He prayed to the Father as if He were someone different from Himself, but in a state of glorification He was that very One Himself. This however will be shown fully in the very work concerning the doctrine of the New Church which I am about to write under the Lord's guidance on my return to Sweden.

*The Reverend Thomas Hartley, the absentee rector of Winwick (Northamptonshire) who lived in East Malling (Kent) became personally acquainted with Swedenborg, together with Dr. Husband Messiter, during the last three years of the seer's life. Hartley's letter to Swedenborg of 2 August 1769 contains (i) an expression of joy in having conversed with Swedenborg; (ii) thankfulness that Divine Providence had led him to his Writings; (iii) two theological questions that are set out below; (iv) a request for biographical details to refute possible adverse criticism; and (v) the offer of his own and Dr. Messiter's services to secure a suitable permanent home in England should persecution drive Swedenborg out of his native land. This, together with a further letter Hartley sent to Swedenborg on 14 August, is now in the Possession of the Royal Library, Stockholm. Though the actual letter of 5 August AMICUM RESPONSUM that Swedenborg sent in reply has been lost, its contents are known from (a) the version Hartley printed and circulated in that same year, which however omits the answers to the two theological questions, and (b) a copy Swedenborg sent to Dr. Messiter which the University Library of Uppsala acquired on the death of Dr. Waller of Lidkoping in 1955. A transcription and translation of the opening paragraphs of the copy to Messiter which contain the answers to the two theological questions are printed separately here. For reasons that are not clear Swedenborg sent to Hartley at the end of the same month the document known as APPENDIX AD CODICILLIUM DE EQUO ALBO, though it did not reach him in East Malling until 10 September. The original has been lost, and so too at a later time was the copy Swedenborg sent to Messiter from which an English translation was made and published in 1824. The text given here is that contained in Swedenborg's own rough draft, which is now lodged in the Royal Academy of Sciences, Stockholm. Variant readings found in the text issued by the Swedenborg Society in 1935 in DE EQUO ALBO are here referred to as Ac. QUAESTIONES NOVEM DE TRINITATE were first published by Robert Hindmarsh in 1785 from a manuscript that is no longer extant. It is almost certain that Hindmarsh revised in places the exact wording of the document(s) he had before him. Hartley's questions seem to arise out of the answers Swedenborg gave in his letter of 5 August 1769 to the former's two questions of 2 August, yet references to VERA CHRISTIANA RELIGIO in the second and seventh answer suggest that this material belongs to correspondence that passed between the two men not earlier than 1771. (BIBLIOGRAPHY: LM pp. 673-86; TD i pp. 3-11, 599-601, TD ii pp. 500-22, 539-40; REV. THOMAS HARTLEY AM, A. E. Beilby, 1931.)