childhood acquaintance with poor, drunken teachers had given him sincerity about education, a subject about which the King was no less concerned than about procuring able clerical aid in the reduction of the nobles. It was not long before the chaplain of the King's guards was promoted to court chaplain, then to a rural parsonage, and almost immediately afterwards to be third professor of theology at Upsala University. Quickly, in the twinkling of a royal eye, he was made rector, then first professor of theology and dean of the university. Eventually he was to become Bishop. (In 1702, Charles XII made him Bishop of Skara.)
Never, Swedberg was fond of saying, did he acquire any of his offices through "hopping and shopping." Not a penny did he ever pay. Thus he enlarged on the blessed feeling it was to have such calls come to one through Divine favor only.
King Charles XI made no mistake in his rapid promotion of the miner's son. Almost part of Swedberg's theology was his belief in absolute monarchy. "The King should be King and the subject should be subject." What if the King were bad? That was God's punishment on the subjects for their bad behavior, and to be borne patiently.
His clerical brethren against whom he never ceased fulminating for their "jealousy and backbiting" were to say later that of course Swedberg thought every kind of parliamentary system a nuisance, placing so many obstacles between himself and royalty, whom he was expert in milking for financial favors.
Jesper Swedberg deplored such people at great length. If there was one thing he knew about himself, he very often said, besides the fact that he had no self-love, it was that he was utterly without the money-grubbing instinct. There was no avarice in his soul. He was scornful of the clergy for taking tithes or confession fees, he never hounded his parishioners for them. "I never kept accountbooks. The Bible was, is and will be all the book I want." Of course, he added, if people brought him presents, that was another matter.
Nor did he despise the income from the church properties to which he was entitled, and when, after inevitably becoming a bishop, he gave his son Jesper a parish (that Jesper who had been "rather wild" before he was tamed in America and the British
