Baron Emanuel Swedenborg, after rendering great service to science, and thereby winning the esteem of Charles XII., and receiving the honour of being enrolled among the members of the academies of Upsal, Stockholm, and Petersburgh, came to London in 1743, attended the Moravian chapel in Fetter Lane, went mad,[79] and began to write and publish the visionary books, containing the creed of the Swedenborgians. Wesley writes: “I sat down to read and seriously consider some of the writings of Baron Swedenborg. I began with huge prejudice in his favour, knowing him to be a pious man, one of a strong understanding, of much learning, and one who thoroughly believed himself. But I could not hold out long. Any one of his visions puts his real character out of doubt. He is one of the most ingenious, lively, entertaining madmen, that ever set pen to paper. But his waking dreams are so wild, so far remote both from Scripture and common sense, that one might as easily swallow the stories of ‘Tom Thumb,’ or ‘Jack the Giant Killer.’” The baron died two years after this, and was buried in the Swedish church in Wellclose Square, London. In the month of February, Wesley, for the last time, took part in a religious service, and administered the sacrament, in the mansion of the Countess of Huntingdon, in Portland Row. Thomas Maxfield was present, and though a few years before he had been one of the strongest sticklers in favour of the wild doctrines propounded by George Bell and other sanctified ones in London, he now, in Wesley’s own presence, spoke strongly against his doctrine of Christian perfection.[80] This might be gratifying to her ladyship and her Calvinistic friends; but it would have been in better taste for Maxfield, at least, to have maintained, on such a subject, a respectful silence. No doubt, foolish ideas had been circulated; but Wesley can hardly be held accountable for these. His own doctrines on the subject were based upon Scripture, and these he was ready to defend, and resolved to propagate. It is true, that his anticipations respecting the great work, which was professedly wrought in London and elsewhere, had not been realised. Even Miss Bosanquet had lost the blessing of Christian perfection;[81] and Wesley, in a letter dated March 15, 1770, confesses that, of those who professed to obtain it, hardly one in thirty retained it. “Many hundreds in London,” says he, “were made partakers of it, within sixteen or eighteen months; but I doubt whether twenty of them are now as holy and as happy as they were.”[82] This was a humiliating fact, and gave to Wesley’s opponents a great advantage; but, in itself, it was no disproof of Wesley’s doctrine; and can scarcely be considered a satisfactory excuse for Thomas Maxfield, of all men living, attacking his friend in the house of his Calvinistic foes.