0. INVITATION TO THE NEW CHURCH*
THERE is no Church truly such, unless God is One, and He, Jehovah God, under a human form.-And thus God is Man, and Man God.
The doctrinals contained in THE TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION agree with the doctrinals of those of the Roman Catholic Church, and with the doctrinals of those among the Protestants, who acknowledge a personal union in Christ, and approach Christ, and take the Eucharist in two kinds.
Various causes why now, for the first time, and not before, those truths of the Church [have been revealed]; among which is this, that a new Church is not instituted before the former Church is being consummated. The Divine Providence in these matters:
From the heresies spread abroad after the time of the Apostles. Why the Romish Church was permitted. Why the separation from it took place, and the causes why it was an unworthy mother. Why the Greek Church separated from the Romish. Various things concerning miracles; that they have destroyed the Church,-also from the Lord's words in Malt. xxiv. All things tended to the invocation of men who were called saints. This Church is not instituted and established through miracles, but through the revelation of the spiritual sense [of the Word], and through the introduction of my spirit, and at the same time of my body, into the spiritual world, so that I might there know what heaven and hell are, and that I might imbibe from the Lord immediately in light the truths of faith, whereby man is led to eternal life. The Advent of the Lord-from the Word and the creeds. Invitation to the New Church that men should go to meet the Lord-from Rev. xxi and xxii; and also from Chap. i, etc., etc.
Hereafter men are not to be styled Evangelicals, Reformed, and still less Lutherans and Calvinists, but Christians. Many things concerning miracles. * Latin text in Volume recently returned from Upsala to The Swedenborg Society and entitled Opuscula Varia Swedenborgii, Vol. II. Aug. Nordenskold. Also in Immanuel Tafel's Diariun Spirituale, App. vii, pp. 142-160.