A Continuation Concerning the Last Judgment · 12 of 12
The Quakers in the Spiritual World
83.XII. THE QUAKERS IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. There are enthusiastic spirits, separated from all others, of such gross perception, that they believe themselves to be the Holy Spirit. When Quakerism commenced, these spirits, being drawn out as it were from encircling forests where they were wandering, obsessed many; infusing the persuasion that they were moved by the Holy Spirit; and because they perceived the influx sensibly, they became so completely filled with this kind of religious persuasion, that they believed themselves more enlightened and holier than the rest; therefore also they could not be withdrawn from their religious persuasion. They who have confirmed themselves therein, come into a similar enthusiasm after death, and are separated from the rest, and sent away to their like in forests, where, at a distance, they appear like wild swine. But they who have not confirmed themselves, being separated from the others, are remanded to a place like a desert, in the extreme borders of the southern quarter, where they have caves for their temples.
84.After the former enthusiastic spirits were removed from them, the trembling which from these spirits had seized their bodies ceased, and they now feel a motion in their left side. It was shown, that from the first time they have gone successively into worse things, and at length, by command of their holy spirit, into heinous things, which they divulge to no one. I conversed with the founder of their religious persuasion, and with Penn, who said that they had no part in such things. But they who have perpetrated such things, are sent down after death into a dark place, where they sit in corners, appearing like the dregs of oil.
85.Since they have rejected the two sacraments, Baptism and the Holy Supper, and still read the Word, and preach the Lord, and speak obsessed by enthusiastic spirits, and thus commix the holy things of the Word with truths profaned, therefore no society is formed of them in the spiritual world, but after being dissociated they wander hither and thither, and are dispersed, and gathered into the above mentioned desert.
86.XIII. THE MORAVIANS IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. I have conversed much with the Moravians, who are also called Herrnhuters. They appeared, at first, in a valley not far from the Jews; but after being examined and detected, were conveyed away into uninhabited places. When they were being examined, they knew how with cunning to captivate minds, saying, that they were the remains of the Apostolic Church, and that therefore they salute each other as brethren, and those who receive their interior mysteries as mothers; also that they teach faith better than others and love the Lord because He suffered the cross, calling Him the Lamb, and the Throne of grace; with other like expressions, by which they induce the belief that the Christian church itself is with them. Those who are captivated by their smooth speeches and draw near to them, are examined by them to see whether they are such that they dare disclose to them their mysteries; if not they conceal them; if they can they reveal them; and then they warn and also threaten those who divulge their mystery concerning the Lord.
87.Since they did the same in the spiritual world, when yet it was perceived that interiorly they did not think so, in order that this might be disclosed, they were admitted into the lowest heaven; but they did not endure the sphere of the charity and faith of the angels there, and they fled away. Afterwards, because in the world they believed that they alone would be alive, and would enter the third heaven, they were also carried up into this heaven, but on perceiving the sphere of love to the Lord there, they were seized with anguish of heart, and began to suffer interior tortures, and to move convulsively, like those who are in the agony of death, therefore they cast themselves down headlong thence. In this manner it was first made manifest that inwardly they had cherished nothing of charity toward the neighbor, and nothing of love to the Lord. They were afterwards sent to those whose function it is to examine the interiors of the thoughts, and these said of them, that they hold the Lord in little estimation, that they reject the life of charity so as to abhor it, and that they make the Word of the Old Testament useless, and despise the Word of the Evangelists; only of their good pleasure selecting from Paul, where anything is said of faith alone; and that these are their mysteries, which they conceal from the world.
88.After it was made manifest that they acknowledge the Lord only as the Arians do, that they despise the Word of the Prophets and Evangelists, and hold a life of charity in hatred, when yet upon these three things as on pillars the whole heaven depends; then they who were in the knowledge and at the same time in the belief of their mysteries, were adjudged Anti-Christs, who reject the three essentials of the Christian church, namely, the Divine of the Lord, the Word, and charity, and were cast outside the Christian world into a desert, which is in the end of the southern quarter near the Quakers.
89.When Zinzendorf first came into the spiritual world after death, and was permitted to speak as before in the world, I heard him asserting, that he knew the mysteries of heaven, and that no one enters heaven who is not of his doctrine; and also, that they who do good works for the sake of salvation, are utterly damned, and that he would rather admit atheists into his congregation than them. The Lord, he said, was adopted by God the Father as His Son, because He endured the cross, and that still He was simply a man. When it was said to him, that the Lord was conceived by God the Father, he replied, that he thought of that matter as he chose, not daring to speak out as the Jews do. Moreover, I have perceived many scandals from his followers, when I have been reading the Evangelists.
90.They say, that they have a sensation, and thence an interior confirmation of their dogmas. But it was shown to them, that their sensation was from visionary spirits, who confirm a man in all his religious persuasions, and enter more closely with those, who like the Moravians, love their religious persuasion, and think much concerning it. These spirits also talked with them, and they mutually recognized each other.
53-1 There is no number 52 in the original Latin.
59-1 This was published in 1763.
