"...I have been told by angels that when Melancthon died, a house was prepared for him like that in which he had lived in the world. This also is done with most of the new-comers, owing to which they do not know that they are not still in the natural world...The things in his room, also were all like this he had before, a similar table, a similar desk with compartments, and also a similar library; so that as soon as he awakened from sleep, he seated himself at the table and continue his writing, as if he were not a dead body, and this one the subject of justification by faith alone, and so on for several days, and writing nothing whatever concerning charity. As the angels perceived this, he was asked through messengers why he did not write about charity also. He replied that there was nothing of the church in charity... He said these things arrogantly, but he did not know that he was dead and that the place to which he had been sent was not heaven. When the angels perceived this, they withdrew... A few weeks after this, the things which he used in his room began to be obscured, and at length to disappear, until at last there was nothing left there but the chair, the table, the paper and the inkstand; and, moreover, the walls of his room seemed to be plastered with lime, and the floor to be covered with a yellow, brick-like material, and he himself seemed to be more coarsely clad. Still, he went on, bent over his desk, persisting in writing his denial of charity... He suddenly seemed to himself to be under ground in a sort of scriptorium, where there were other theologians, like him. And when he wished to go out he was detained by some force. At this, he began to question his ideas, and the was taken out, and sent back to his former chamber...he appeared clad in a hairy skin, but he tried to imagine that what had gone before was mere hallucination, and he went on praising faith and denying charity. One evening, at dusk, he felt a chill. That led him to walk through the house, and he realized that the other rooms were no longer those of the dwelling in which he had lived on earth. One room was filled with unknown instruments, another had shrunk so much that he could not enter it; another one had not itself changed, but its windows and doors opened onto great sand dunes, at which sat men like himself, who also cast charity into exile, and he said that he conversed with them, and was confirmed by them day by day, and told that not other theologian was as wise as he. He was smitten with that adoration, but since some of the persons had no no face, and others were like dead men, he soon came to abominate and mistrust them. Then he began to write something about charity; but what he wrote one day, he did not see the next; for this happens to every one there when he commits anything to words from the external man only, and not at the same time from the internal, thus from compulsion and not from freedom; it is obliterated of itself... When any novitiates from the world entered his room to speak with him and see him, he was ashamed that they should find him in such a sordid place, and so he would summon one of the magical spirits, who by fantasy could produce various becoming shapes, and who then adorned his room with ornaments wound with flowered tapestry...but as soon as the visitors were gone, these shapes vanished, and the former lime plastering and emptiness returned, and sometimes before. The last word we have of Melancthon is that the wizard and one of the men without a face carried him out to the sand dunes, where he is now a servant to demons..." Source : Emanuel Swedenborg, from Arcana Celetia (1772) translated into Spanish, Jorge Luis Borges and footnoted as source material in his Universal History of Iniquity (1935), "Et Cetera" section after he encountered the story in The Swedenborg Concordance : A Complete work of reference to the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swendenborg, based on the original latin writings of the author (trans. by Rev. John Faulkner Potts) 4v. (London : Swedenborg Society, 1888) - see p.531 of Collected Fictions : Jorge Luis Borges (Penguin : 1998) trans. Andrew Hurley.
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