*I received your letter of April 18 together with that which was communicated by you to His Royal Majesty, and with this a reference to a story that had reached Goteborg concerning a decision that was supposed to have been issued in the Council Chamber. But after the copies of the letter I sent to you had been dispatched to Privy Councillor Ekeblad and to the Chancellor of Justice, the matter has been taken up again, and resulted in the conclusion contained in the statement of the Chancellor of Justice to the Consistory in Goteborg, of which I beg a copy from you.

Had the matter stopped at the first scheme, that Swedenborgianism - which however signifies the worship of the Lord - was not to be mentioned or discussed, what else would this have produced than a fear among priests to speak of Christ and His care for human beings; for there would be the risk of being arraigned on the ground that this is Swedenborgianism; and as a consequence Christianity would decline in Sweden and lapse into Socinianism, and finally into heathendom, as may be concluded from Matt. xii 30 and Mark ix 40. Such would have been the progeny of the first scheme. For this reason, when certain zealous priests here in the city first heard of the rumours, they were astonished and thought that thus would Christianity decline in this country. I have learned that the bishops and several of the revered estate of the Clergy, when the Diet was in session, expressed themselves handsomely about the matters of doctrine that were dealt with then.

Nothing of what the consistories submitted against my Writings was communicated to me, so that I have been in total ignorance of what transpired in the Privy Council.

Next June I go to Amsterdam where I intend to Publish THE WHOLE THEOLOGY OF THE NEW CHURCH. The worship of the Lord is there the foundation, and if the true house or temple be not built upon it, others would build lupanaria or brothels on it.

As regards the Dragonists they are all being removed far to the south. There the learned are allotted a certain location, and there each is given his own cell in which to confirm justification by faith alone, and those who confirm it by means of the Word of God passing on from there into a desert place, and so on. As for the others, having been let out they receive no homestead. Where they afterwards betake themselves I do not yet know. There is no place for them in heaven. They experience what is described in APOCALYPSE REVEALED n. 421; but the abyss there described is now, as was said. removed further to the south.

I remain etc. Eman. Swedenborg

Stockholm 30 April 1770

* On 21 March and again on 18 April, Beyer wrote of rumours that he and Dr. Rosen were about to be dismissed on account of their Swedenborgian sympathies, to which Swedenborg replied on 12 April and 30 April respectively.

Both TD ii p. 369 and LM p. 714 declare that the original letter of 30 April is at the Royal Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, but in November 1970 the editor did not find it there. Photo-copies of this original that has gone astray are however available.