*Since I shall leave for Amsterdam next week, and understand that the religious process in regard to Doctor Beyer and Doctor Rosen has been settled in an unexpected manner in the council, and since this matter is likely to be talked about for a long time in Goteborg, I shall therefore have the honour of sending you what I have addressed to His Royal Majesty concerning it, and this for the purpose of offsetting the malicious judgment which can be expected without fail to issue from the mouths of certain persons, and indeed from their interior folly and petulance.

I heard from two gentlemen of the Supreme Court of Appeals that the privy council is Pontifex Maximus in religious cases. To this I made no reply at the time, but in case I shall again hear such an assertion from them I will reply that they are by no means the Pontifex Maximus, but only the vicar of the vicar of the Pontifex Maximus, since Christ our Saviour is alone Pontifex Maximus. The estates of the Diet are His vicar, wherefore too they have the responsibility, and the Privy Council is the vicar of the estates, being empowered by them, and is thus the vicar of the vicar of the Pontifex Maximus. Nor do I see in what the pontificate of the Privy Council consists, for they have simply assented to the opinion of the Goteborg Consistory, and have in no way searched in my books for any matter of religion, and have nonetheless forbidden them. That the Pope of Rome calls himself Pontifex Maximus is due to presumptuous arrogance, he having taken and ascribed to himself all the power of Christ our Saviour, and would have the people believe that he is Christ on earth.

I have not yet received an answer from the council. When the matter was before the council last week it was decided to let it rest until the return of those members from the country who had previously been over it. I am well aware that they smite me on my right cheek, but as to how they may rub off what is anointed on the other, I know not.

I send my fond greetings to Doctor Beyer and Doctor Rosen, and to the others in Goteborg who believe in our Saviour.

I remain, etc.

Em. Swedenborg.

Stockholm 19 July 1770

* Another member of the group of sympathisers in Goteborg was the wealthy textile manufacturer Augustus Alstromer to whom Swedenborg sent, together with the letter printed here, a copy of the petition he had sent to the King on 25 May 1770 concerning the persecution of Swedenborgianism in that city. The Swedish text here is based on a copy in Swedenborg's own hand. This copy is now the property of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Stockholm.