Count Hopken. Most Well-Born Sir Count and the Nation's Council!

Not until the 14th instant did I have the honour of receiving your very gracious letter of 5th Nov. I am pleased that the last two books have arrived. It is certain that the BRIEF EXPOSITION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE NEW CHURCH will meet with criticism, as you foresee. Yet this [is to be expected] only in the beginning while there is still darkness from previously accepted and confirmed principles, but since the rational has light within itself in theological matters too, therefore the truth will gradually be seen and acknowledged. It has been so in many places abroad. Still, as I doubt that such a change will as yet have taken place in Stockholm, I have dispatched only one copy of this work to Bishop Benzelstjerna, and this with the strict proviso that it shall in no way be communicated to any other person; for in my opinion Benzelstjerna takes theology too into his rational, and does not accept irrational things from obedience to faith.

The reasons why the Catholics are preferred are set forth in n. 105 seq., but in addition there is also this, that the reference is to a universal Church in the whole of Christianity.

When this preliminary treatise was finished the whole of heaven, from east to west and from south to north, appeared to me covered with deep scarlet roses, this to the amazement of all present in the world of spirits - a testification to the consent and pleasure of the New Heaven.

In the little work I sent to you, as in my previous writings, I do not have in mind a Son of God born from eternity, but the Son of God conceived and born in the world, in whom is the Divine Trinity. In the Apostles' Creed, which was the confession of faith of the Apostolic Church, there is no mention of any other Son of God, nor is any other meant in the Gospels, Luke i 32, 25; Matthew iii 17, xvii 5; John xx 31; I John v 20, 21. But that the Nicene Council later assumed a Son of God from eternity, adding one more person as God, was because they found no other way to drive out the heresies of Arius, and it is particularly in regard to this that the Church of today insists that the understanding is to be drawn into a blind faith and hidden away in it. Yet that it falls within the reason of man to see and believe how the matter is, may be seen in n. 117 and then in n. 44.

Your regard for my writings pleases me deeply. Respectfully thanking you,

I remain, etc. Em. Swedenborg

Stockholm 17 November 1769

* Elected to the Diet 1738, Prime Minister 1752-61, founder member and the first secretary of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, Chancellor of Uppsala University 1760-64, Count Anders Johan von Hopken (1712-89) first met Swedenborg c. 1730, though the two did not become intimately acquainted until 1759 when he began eagerly to acquire copies of the theological works as they became available. In 1761 when his friend was compelled to resign the premiership Swedenborg sprang to his defence in a memorial he presented to the Diet; and von Hopken in turn was to defend Swedenborg during the period of the Goteborg tribulations. From Swedenborg's letter of 17 November 1769 printed here we learn that von Hopken, in a letter no longer extant, (i) acknowledged the receipt Of SUMMARIA EXPOSITIO DOCTRINAE NOVAE ECCLESIAE and of (probably) DE COMMERCIO ANIMAE ET CORPORIS, (ii) asked why so much attention was given to Roman Catholicism in the first of these two books, and (iii) posed a theological question concerning the term' Son of God'. Swedenborg's original letter has been lost and therefore the Swedish text here is based on two different copies in the possession of the Royal Library in Stockholm (C1 and C2) and on a reprint in A. Kahl's Nya Kyrkan och des inflytande pa Theologiens Studium I Swerige. In most cases variations in these three texts are purely orthographical.