17. For on the seventh day, viz. Saturday, Saturn has the first hour of the day [under] his dominion in the planetic orb; which is a figure of the sevenfold generation of the eternal nature. For like as first form of the eternal nature is the astringent desire, viz. the Fiat, which in the desire impresses the free lubet (which is as a thin nothing in the eternal will of God, in the divine understanding) and introduces it into a spiritual essence, in which desire-essence all the properties do arise, as is above mentioned.n7411 ¶1
18. So likewise Saturn, or the seventh property of the seventh day, is the rest or mansion of the other six days works, wherein they work as a spirit in the body: the seventh property stands still as a senseless life.n7411 ¶2
19. But that now Moses says, God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and sanctified the seventh day for rest: this has a very peculiar emphatical deep meaning; and yet it were but plain and child-like, if we were in Paradise, and dwelt in the Sabbath. Understand it thus:n7411 ¶3
20. Out of the Verbum Fiat, viz. out of the divine Word, and out of the divine desire (which is the Fiat in the Word, wherewith the Word forms itself, or introduces itself in the spiritual essence to the dark fire-and-light- world), the six properties of the eternal and temporal nature proceeded; and each has introduced itself into a sundry degree of a sundry property, which degree may be called a heaven, or a magical spiritual-constellation.n7411 ¶4
21. For each property is a spirated essence, viz. a heaven: for heaven [Text, Himmel, expounded in the Language of nature] does properly and exactly denote and signify, in the Language of nature, a spiration or formation, where the Fiat forms what the Word speaks or breathes forth; and thus the spiration or speaking was introduced into six degrees or days'-works.n7411 ¶5
22. Each spiration continued [for] a time, viz. the length of a day and night in the formation and conception, and each property of a day was mutually spoken or breathed forth out of the other, even unto the sixth, in which the formed Word was manifest, which in the fifth form, viz. in the love-desire, did receive its aspect or illustration through the fire from the light; and amassed or formed itself in the sixth form of nature; in which formation the image of God (man) was created, as an image of the formed Word, which God introduced into the Sabbath, viz. into the seventh day, understand, into the Verbum Fiat, viz. into the first divine desire to nature, wherein Paradise and the eternal day was.n7411 ¶6
23. For in the seventh property lieth the eternal day, whence the days of time are proceeded; and the ancients have called it Sonnabendn7411 ¶7
[Sun-evening, or the evening of the sun. In our English, Saturday] ; but it is rightly called Sonnaabend [The Evening of reconciliation: or Saving-day] , wherein God's love does appease and atone the anger; as, when the six properties in the operate do enkindle themselves in the impression in the wrath's property, they are atoned and reconciled in the seventh property, viz. in the manifested holy power of God in the love-desire; (which holy power manifests itself in the fifth and sixth property, and does encircle the operate of all the rest as a holy heaven) and so are introduced into one only essence, wherein they rest, as in the Word of the Lord [Text, im Verbo Domini] ; which has introduced itself with the seven properties into nature and essence; and thereof Moses speaks rightly, God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and hallowed the seventh day.n7411 ¶8
24. Understand it here aright: God rested with his formed Word (which he first introduces into darkness and fire, viz. into the first Principle, according to which he is called a consuming fire), in the second Principle, viz. in the formed holy Word, where he educes himself through the fire in the light in the love-desire, viz. in the holy Fiat: and rests eternally with his manifested Word therein. His rest therein is a dominion of joy, where the anguish-source of God's wrath, of the eternal nature, is changed into a divine kingdom of joy.n7411 ¶9
25. And this rest is the holy heaven in the natural heaven, where time works in itself; and sets forth its operate for the day of rest, viz. the day of separation, where, at the end of the days of this world, the evil shall be separated from the good, and each thing shall possess its own heaven, viz. the property of its original [or sourcive] spirit, whence it was generated.n7411 ¶10
26. But in this time God's love and anger must mutually work in one another, and manifest the wonders of God, both according to the fire- [world] and light- world, and the Verbum Domini rests in the seventh manifestation of the properties, and shines with its power and virtue into the operation of the six days, viz. into the six properties; and affords aid and help to every life.n7411 ¶11
27. In the seventh property all things are brought into their end, viz. into the first day of the beginning of all essences. For the seventh day, viz. the seventh property of the eternal nature, is the transparent glassy sea before the throne of the Ancient, in the Revelation of St. John 's, whence, as out of the Grand Mystery [Ex Mysterio Magno], this world was created into sundry peculiar heavens and forms, and formed in the Verbum Fiat.n7411 ¶12
The seventh day was from eternity without and beyond all time, for it is the formed Word of the divine understanding; in it the eternal wisdom of God is manifest, viz. the powers and wonders of the divine understanding, in which the Deity works.n7411 ¶13
The Seventeenth Chaptern7411 ¶14
Of Paradisen7411 ¶15
1. Moses said, that when God had made man, that he planted a garden in Eden, and there he put man, to till and keep the same: and caused all manner of fruits to grow, pleasant for the sight and good for food: and planted the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the midst (Gen. ii. 8, 9).n7411 ¶16
2. Here lies the veil before the face of Moses, in that he had a bright shining countenance, that sinful Israel cannot look him in the face. For the man of vanity is not worthy to know what Paradise is; and albeit it be given us to know it according to the hidden man, yet, by this description, we shall remain as dumb to the beast; but yet be sufficiently understood by our fellow- scholars.n7411 ¶17
3. The Garden Eden was a place upon the earth, where man was tempted; and the Paradise was in heaven; and yet was in the Garden Eden. For as Adam, before his Eve [was made out of him], before his sleep, was as to his inward man in heaven, and as to the outward upon the earth;n7411 ¶18
and as the inward holy man penetrated the outward, as a fire through-heats an iron, so also the heavenly power out of the pure element penetrated the four elements, and sprang forth through the earth, and bore fruits, which were heavenly and earthly, and were qualified [sweetly tempered] of the divine power; and the vanity in the fruit was held as it were swallowed up, as the day hides the night, and holds it captive in itself; that it is not known andn7411 ¶19
4. Paradise was nothing else but the seventh day's property. The heavenly essentiality of the second Principle is couched or shut up in the earth, the curse of God has hidden it; it budded (in the beginning of the world) through the earthly essentiality, as the eternity is in the time, and the divine power is through all things; and yet is neither comprehended nor understood of any earthly thing in selfhood.n7411 ¶20
5. But in Paradise the essence of the divine world penetrated the essence of time, as the sun penetrates the fruit upon a tree, and effectually works it into a pleasantness, that it is lovely to look upon and good to eat: the like also we are to understand of the garden in Eden.n7411 ¶21
6. The word Eden [expounded according to the Language of nature] is nothing else but what Moses says of the earth: that it was void and empty;n7411 ¶22
that is, it should not manifest its might according to the wrath of vanity, it should be still, as a mother to bring forth. For the internal would rule through the external, as the spiritual world through time, [and] heaven through the earth. The earth was empty without fruit; but the heaven was its husband, which made it fruitful, and bore fruit by it until the curse, where heaven did hide [disappear or withdraw] itself from the earth.n7411 ¶23
7. The whole world would have been a mere Paradise, if Lucifer had not corrupted it, who was in the beginning of his creation a hierarch in the place of this world. But seeing God knew well that Adam would fall, therefore Paradise sprang forth and budded only in one certain place, to introduce and confirm man therein; whom (albeit God saw that he would again depart thence), he would again introduce thereinto by Christ, and establish him anew in Christ, to eternity in Paradise.n7411 ¶24
8. For Lucifer poisoned the first Paradise with his false and wicked desire, therefore God promised to regenerate it anew in Christ; for the seventh day, which God appointed for rest, is nothing else but Paradise regenerate anew in the spirit of Christ, in the human property, wherein the poor soul shall rest eternally from the source of the six days'-works, viz. of the six properties of the life.n7411 ¶25
9. Also it is the seventh time or manifestation of God, in which the Mystery of God's kingdom shall be finished, when it shall be again pure in the place of this world; when heaven shall be again manifest in the world, and the devil driven out with his wickedness: [Text: evil essence ] whereinto no unclean thing shall any more enter; for this world, in which Adam was, before his Eve, must again return, as it was before the curse, in which righteousness shall rule:n7411 ¶26
but the vanity shall be purged away through the fire of God's anger, and given to the dark world.n7411 ¶27
10. But that Moses said, the Tree of Life stood in the midst of the Garden, and presently next after sets down, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Here lies the veil before his eyes, that the earthly sinful man cannot behold him; for he is not worthy of it; for his earthliness in the curse of the bestial vanity shall not inheritn7411 ¶28
11. The precious pearl lies in [the knowledge of] the difference of the two Trees: and yet it is but only one, but manifest in two kingdoms.n7411 ¶29
For the Tree of Life stands wholly in the midst of the Garden; for it stands in two Principles, in the midst, viz. in the holy world, between the eternal dark world of God's anger, where God is an angry zealous God and a consuming fire, and the outward visiblen7411 ¶30
12. The holy power of God in the Tree was the middle-most kingdom, and Paradise was the outermost kingdom; for the middlemost penetrated the outermost, and manifested itself with the outward.n7411 ¶31
This was the knowledge of the Good, which Adam should have as little known, in its original, as the Evil: he was created for an instrument of God, with whom God would manifest his wonders in figures; he should keep only a child-like mind, and be resigned unto God.n7411 ¶32
13. Now the Tree of the Knowledge of Evil was the dark world, which also was manifest on this Tree; likewise the vanity, as now [At this day] it is;n7411 ¶33
all earthly fruit was manifest therein. Therefore Moses distinguishes the Tree, and says, the Tree of Life; thereby he understands the property of the eternal life in the Tree, viz. the second Principle. And by the words, of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, he understands [means] the wrath of the anger of God, which was manifest by the essence of the outward world, in earthliness in this Tree, of which Adam should not eat; for he should have eaten [or eat] with the inward mouth, and not with the earthly desire but with the heavenly;n7411 ¶34
for he had such fruit growing for him which the inward mouth could enjoy; indeed the outward mouth did also eat thereof; but not into the worm's carcass.n7411 ¶35
14. For as the light swallows [avalleth] up the darkness, so the celestial swallowed up the terrestrial, and changed it again into that whence it proceeded;n7411 ¶36
or as the eternity swallows up the time, and in it is as a nothing. So likewise there were two centres in Adam's mouth. For the kingdom of God stands in power; and Adam also, before his Eve, stood in the kingdom of God, for he was male and female, with both divine heavenly tinctures; and neither the fire's nor the light's tincture or desire should be manifest in him, for they should stand in equal weight [in the true temperature] resigned in [or to] God.n7411 ¶37
15. But in the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil the properties, viz. of God's love and anger, and also the earthliness (as it is at this day in the curse), were peculiarly manifest, each in itself, and did eagerly put themselves forth; that is, they were departed out of the likeness, out of the equal harmonious accord. And all the three Principles were each of them in an especial manner manifest in this Tree, and therefore Moses calls it, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.n7411 ¶38
16. Reason says, Wherefore did God suffer this Tree to grow, seeing man should not eat thereof? Did he not bring it forth for the fall of man? And must it not needs be the cause of man's destruction?n7411 ¶39
This is that about which the high schools contend, and understand it not; for they go about to seek and apprehend the inward in the outward, and it remains hidden and dead unto them, they understand not what man is.n7411 ¶40
17. Man, according to body and soul, was created out of all the three Principles; and was placed in the Principles, in the properties of the inward and outward world, in equal number, weight and measure; none of the Principles did exceed the other; there was an agreeing harmony; the divine light tempered all the properties, so that there was a mutual melody and play of unanimous love between them.n7411 ¶41
18. The fiery dark- world rejoiced in the holy light- world, and the light- world in the outward [world], as in its manifestation. Again, the outward world joyed itself in both the inward worlds; as in its life; and there was a mere pleasing harmonious will, pleasure and sweet delight between them. The Mercury, viz. the sounding, hearing and feeling life, viz. the manifestation of the divine Word in the Fiat, did mutually penetrate all essences, in a very exceeding joyful property.n7411 ¶42
19. The property or essence of all the three worlds reached with the desire after the light [or set their desire upon the light] ;n7411 ¶43
and in the light the expressed Word was holy. This holy Word gave its power and virtue to the sound of the inward dark fire- world; and also into the sound of the outward elemental world, viz. it gave itself into the inward fiery Word or life, and also into the outward earthly life.n7411 ¶44
20. Thus the holy divine Word was predominant through all the three Principles of the human property, and there was an equal accord; and no enmity or opposite will was manifest between the Principles, but a mere harmonious affection and inclination of will, pleasing relish, ravishing melody, sweet smell, a friendly smiling, and most pleasant aspect, a meek and kind sense, and mutual fruition of delight.n7411 ¶45
21. for man was, on the sixth day, taken and created unto a divine likeness and image in the sixth manifestation of the seven properties of the divine harmonious manifestation in the expressed power, which has diffused and manifested itself through the fifth property, viz. through the fiery love-desire. His true life's-centre was the fifth property of the eternal nature, viz. the fiery love-desire; which held the fire and darkness hidden [or shut up] in itself, and used it to its joy and delight.n7411 ¶46
22. But it is very needful for us to understand aright in this place, whence the desire to fall away from the equal accord did arise, both in the hierarch Lucifer, and also in Adam, the second hierarch or royal prince in the divine image.n7411 ¶47
23. When the eternal only God once moved himself through the eternal spiritual nature, viz. in the eternal great abyssal Mystery, and comprised [or amassed] this Mystery into a circumference or place, to manifest his great wonders; and introduced the eternal wisdom into a formal visible contemplation, and manifested all the seven properties of the inward eternal spiritual world, and introduced them into a creation of the angels;n7411 ¶48
then all the properties were moved and affected and each desired to be in a creatural form, in the place, so far as then7411 ¶49
Verbum Fiat had put itself forth [or given itself in] to motion and manifestation.n7411 ¶50
24. And the angelical princes also, with their legions, were taken and created out of the properties in the Verbum Fiat, even from the first centre where the eternal lubet betakes itself into a desire, and introduces itself into nature, unto the most external manifestation, each hierarchy in its heaven or property.n7411 ¶51
25. But seeing Lucifer was, in his creation or formation of the properties, apprehended in the Principle of the property where the enkindling fire arises, where the light is manifest, thereupon he became so aspiring in himself as the most mighty prince; and being in the root of his creatural original he understood the great magical constellation, viz. the Mystery of the ground of all being, but yet in the dark property, which yet was now moved and affected; which magical constellation also desired to be [or would be] manifest and creatural in the dark world, thereupon it set its desire upon this mighty prince and hierarch.n7411 ¶52
26. And he, Lucifer, turned himself away from the divine light into the fiery Mystery, towards the darkness, whence the fire arises. And so the magical astrum of the Grand Mystery of the dark world apprehended him; for his desire, which the Verbum Fiat had extroduced through the fire in the light, turned itself back again thereinto, and would be like the creator of all beings, and change himself and the essence according to his own pleasure.n7411 ¶53
27. Thus he contemned the meekness in the light, viz. the second Principle, which [arises] through the fire-death, (where the wrath, of the spiritual essentiality of the wrathful dark property, dies in the fire; and out of which death of devoration the second Principle, viz. the holy love-world of great meekness and humility, is generated), and went back into the first Principle, viz. In magiam naturae, into the original of the eternal nature; and would be an omniscient artist: he would rule and domineer in and above the whole creation, and be a co-former in all properties.n7411 ¶54
28. Thus the light was extinct to him, for he made his angelical essence, which stood in great meekness and in fiery love-desire, wholly rough, austere, cold, wrathful and fiery, in the dark wrathful property; and the properties of enmity instantly arose in him, for in the light they could not be manifest; but when the light extinguished they were manifest, and he became a devil; and was driven out of the angelical world, out of his own heaven of the secondn7411 ¶55
Principle.n7411 ¶56
29. Thus we are to know, that the fall befell him from his creature, for he had not turned away his creatural desire from the divine meekness and love, in pride and stubborn will, to rule in the matrix of the pregnatress, which took him as a player, he had remained an angel. Had he continued under God's love-spirit and will, then his anger-spirit and will had not captivated him.n7411 ¶57
30. But seeing he has freely and willingly broken himself off from God's love-will, he has now God's anger-will in him, wherein he must be a manifestor and worker of the dark world's property, for it also would be creatural. Here it has a right captive,that can artificially act in ape's-sport; and now, as the dark world is in its property in its desire such also is its hierach or creatural prince.n7411 ¶58
31. And here it is very requisite for us to know aright how man came to fall. Man was created in the stead and place of extruded Lucifer, understand the inward spiritual man. He wa created in the same heaven, according to the inward human soul, and should possess the hierarchy which Lucifer had lost; and hence the devil's envy against man is arisen.n7411 ¶59
32. But seeing God did well know that the devil would tempt him, and not beteem him that honour, the deepest love of God (viz. the high name Jesus out of JEHOVAH) has freely given itself herein, to regenerate this hierarchy which Lucifer had defiled;n7411 ¶60
and to purge it through the fire, and to introduce his highest love thereinto; and to overcome the wrath (which Lucifer had awakened) with love, and change it again into divine joy, viz. into a holy heaven; in which place the Last judgement stands [or unto which end the Last judgement is appointed]. And this is that which Saint Paul says, Man was chosen [or elected] in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world was laid.n7411 ¶61
33. And for this end God created man out of three Principles in one, that [being] he did not live wholly in the place of Lucifer, that so he might help him. for God saw very well, according to the property of his wrath, that man would fall; but he would bring him again through and in the name Jesus through the corruptible death, into the royal kingdom whence Lucifer was fallen; in whose stead the man Christ, God and man in one person, should sit as a hierarch, high priest, or the great prince of men, in the name and power of Jesus out of JEHOVAH.n7411 ¶62
34. Therefore we are here rightly to consider of the fall of man, how he stood in Paradise and was tempted, and what the Paradise was. Man stood in three Principles, which indeed stood in man himself; viz. in body and soul, in equal accord and harmony;n7411 ¶63
but not [so] without him, for the dark- world has another desire than the light-world; so also the outward world has another desire than the dark-and-light-world. Now the image of God stood between three Principles, all which three did set their desire upon this image, each would be manifest in Adam, and have him in their dominion for a ruler, and manifest their wonders through him.n7411 ¶64
35. But he, man, should have introduced his desire only into the sixth property of the divine manifestation, wherein he was created to an image of God;n7411 ¶65
he should be wholly resigned to God; he should live only in the manifested divine Word, obedience to God, and not enter into [his] own will, but introduce his desire into God's will, viz. into the sixth property; that so the manifested Word of God might be his will, knowing, and doing: even as the holy angels do so live and rejoice only in the divine will, and melodise in the Holy Ghost, as he does open and manifest himself in them, according to the divine wisdom; and thus they live, will and act with a child-like mind and will.n7411 ¶66
36. Paradise, or the garden in Eden, did indeed stand with its properties in equal concord as to man. But the properties were in themselves an awakened hunger, each in itself; which verily the divine light did again introduce into a temperature. But the devil, in his enkindled envy, opposed man, and insinuated his venomous imagination into the human property, and enkindled the human properties in the centre in the first Principle of the soul's property, wherein the soul stands in like essence and being with the angels and devils.n7411 ¶67
37. Whence Adam's imagination and earnest hunger did arise, that he would eat of the evil and good, and live in [his] own will. That is, his will departed out of the equal concord into the multiplicity of the properties; for he would prove, feel, taste, hear, smell and see them. As the devil did persuade them also in the Serpent, they should be as God, and their eyes should be open in the properties; which also happened unto them in the fall, that they knew, tasted, saw and felt evil and good: whence arose unto them sickness, disease, pains and corruption [or the dissolution of this carcass].n7411 ¶68
38. And seeing the divine providence did afore know that the devil would tempt man, and bring him into strange lust; lest he should long after the centre of the dark world, and become a devil, as Lucifer did, God did represent unto him the Tree of Life, and of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, wherein the dissolution of the outward life was manifest.n7411 ¶69
39. for Adam was guilty therein, seeing he was yet in Paradise when he lusted after vanity, and brought his imagination into the earth, viz. into that essence whence the limus of the outward body was extracted; and desired out of his mother to assay of the enkindled vanity which the devil had inflamed. Thereupon the Fiat drew him forth such a plant out of the matrix of the earth, whence also it had extracted Adam's body, so that Adam, in his hunger, had to eat.n7411 ¶70
40. For the essence in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the hunger of the desire in Adam, were alike; what he desired was represented unto him by the Fiat; Adam's imagination was the cause of it.n7411 ¶71
41. Reason says, wherefore did God suffer it to come to pass? Christ said, If you had faith as a grain of mustard- seed, and should say to this mountain be cast into the sea, it should be done: [I prithee], was not the soul's spirit [sprung forth] out of the great divine omnipotence out of the centre of the eternal spiritual nature, whence all beings were created, and should it not then be potent?n7411 ¶72
42. He was a fire-spark out of God's might. But when he was formed into a creatural being of the creatures, he withdrew into selflust, and broke himself off from the universal being, and entered into a self-fullness. And so he wrought his own destruction, and this he had had, if God's love had not redeemed him.n7411 ¶73
43. The soul's power was so potent before the vanity, that it was not subject to any thing; and so it is still powerful, if the understanding were not taken away from it. It can by magic alter all things whatsoever that are in the outward world's essence, and introduce them into another essence; but the vanity in the outward air's dominion has brought a darkness thereinto, so that the soul does not know itself. The curse of God has cast the defiled child into the dirt, that it must pray for a laver; and must be in this lifetime its own enemy, that it may learn to be humble, and continue in the divine harmony, and not become a devil.n7411 ¶74
The Eighteenth Chaptern7411 ¶75
Of the Paradisical State * showing how it should have been if Adam had not fallenn7411 ¶76
* Dominion, life or conditionn7411 ¶77
1. I KNOW the sophist will here cavil at me, and cry it down as a thing impossible for me to know, seeing I was not there and saw it myself: To him I say, that I, in the essence of my soul and body, when I was not as yet I, but when I was in Adam's essence, was there, and did myself fool away [negligently lose] my glory in Adam. But seeing Christ has restored it again unto me, I see, in the spirit of Christ, what I was in Paradise; and what I now am in sin; and what I shall be again.n7411 ¶78
And therefore let none cry it out as a thing unknowable; for although I indeed know it not, yet the spirit of Christ knows it in me; from which knowledge I shall write.n7411 ¶79
2. Adam was a man and also a woman, and yet none of them [distinct], but a virgin, full of chastity, modesty and purity, viz. the image of God. He had both the tinctures of the fire and the light in him; in the conjunction of which the own love, viz. the virginal centre, stood, viz. the fair Paradisical rose-garden of delight, wherein he loved himself. As we also, in the resurrection of the dead, shall be such; as Christ tells us, that we shall neither marry, nor be given in marriage, but be like the angels of God.n7411 ¶80
3. Such a man, as Adam was before his Eve, shall arise and again enter into, and eternally possess Paradise; not a man, or a woman, but as the Scripture says, they are virgins, and follow God, and the Lamb, they are like to the angels of God, yet not only pure spirit, as the angels, but in heavenly bodies, in which the spiritual angelical body inhabites.n7411 ¶81
4. Seeing then Adam was created in Paradise to the life eternal in the image of God; and God himself breathed his life and spirit into him; therefore we can well describe him, how he was in his innocency, and how he fell, and what he is now, and shall again be at last.n7411 ¶82
5. If God had created him unto [or for] the earthly, corruptible, miserable, naked, sick, bestial, toilsome life, then he had not brought him into Paradise; if God had desired [or willed] the bestial copulation and propagation, then he would instantly, in the beginning, have created man and woman, and both sexes had come forth in the Verbum Fiat, into the division of both tinctures, as it was in the other earthly creatures.n7411 ¶83
6. Every creature brings its clothing from its mother's body; but man comes miserable, naked and bare, in deepest poverty, and unability; and is able to do nothing; and in his arrival to this world he is the poorest, miserablest, forlornest, and most shiftless creature amongst all kinds, which cannot at all help himself; which does sufficiently show unto us that he was not created of God unto this misery, but in [unto] his perfection, as all other creatures were; which [perfection] the first man fooled away [or lost] by false lust; whereupon God afterwards, in his sleep, did first figurise him in the outwardn7411 ¶84
Fiat to the natural life in man and woman, according to the property of all earthly creatures; and hung upon him the worms'-carcass, with the bestial members for propagation, of which the poor soul is to this day ashamed, that it must bear a bestial form on the body.n7411 ¶85
7. Two fixed and steadfast essences were in Adam, viz. the spiritual body from [or of] the love-essentiality of the inward heaven, which was God's temple; and the outward body, viz. the limus of the earth, which was the mansion and habitation of the inward spiritual body, which in no wise was manifest according to the vanity of the earth, for it was a limus, an extract of the good part of the earth; which at the Last judgement shall be severed in the earth from the vanity of the curse, and the corruption of the devil.n7411 ¶86
8. These two essences, viz. the inward heavenly, and the outward heavenly, were mutually espoused to each other, and formed into one body [text, Corpus], wherein was the most holy tincture of the divine fire and light, viz. the great joyful love-desire, which did inflame the essence, so that both essences did very earnestly and ardently desire each other in the love-desire, and loved one another: the inward loved the outward as its manifestation and sensation, and the outward loved the inward as its greatest sweetness and joyfulness, as its precious pearl and most beloved spouse and consort. And yet they were not two bodies, but only one; but of a twofold essence, viz. one inward, heavenly, holy; and one from the essence of time; which were espoused and betrothed to each other to an eternal [being] *.n7411 ¶87
* Or eternallyn7411 ¶88
9. And the magical impregnation [or conception] and birth did stand in this fiery love-desire, for the tincture penetrated through both essences, through the inward and outward, and did awaken (or stir up) the desire;n7411 ¶89
and the desire was the Fiat, which the love-lubet [or imagination] took [conceived], and brought into a substance. Thus the likeness of the express image was formed in this substance, being a spiritual image according to the first. [Just] as the Fiat had conceived and formed the first image, viz. Adam, so also the likeness was conceived out of the first for propagation; and in this conception the magical birth was also forthwith (effected), where, in the birth, the spiritual body became external.n7411 ¶90
10. Understand, if it had been that Adam had stood in the trial, then the magical birth had been thus [effected] : not by a sundry peculiar issue from Adam's body, as now, but as the sun throughshines the water, and rends or tears it not. Even so [in like manner] the spiritual body, viz. the birth, had been brought forth, and in its coming forth had become substantial, without pains, care and distress, in a great joyfulness and delight, in a manner as both seeds of man and woman do receive in their conjunction a pleasant aspect. Even so also the magical impregnation and birth, had been a virginlike image, wholly perfect according to the first.n7411 ¶91
11. Which afterwards, when Venus' s matrix was taken from Adam, and formed into a woman, must be done through anguish, trouble, smart, pangs and distress; as God said to Eve, / will multiply your sorrows when you conceive, you shall now bring forth children with sorrow, and your will shall be subject to your husband. Wherefore? Because it was sprung forth from the man's will. Eve was half the Adam, viz. the part wherein Adam should have loved and impregnated himself; the same, when as he stood not, was taken from him in his sleep, and formed into a woman: therefore when Adam saw her, he said, She shall be called woman, because she is taken out of man.n7411 ¶92
12. Man should have walked naked upon the earth, for the heavenly [part] penetrated the outward, and was his clothing. He stood in great beauty, glory, joy and delight, in a child-like mind; he should have eaten and drunk in a magical manner; not into the body, as now, but in the mouth there was the separation; for so likewise was the fruit of Paradise.n7411 ¶93
13. All things were made for his sport and delight; no sleep was in him; in or to him the night was as the day; for he saw with pure eyes in peculiar light [in his own genuine innate light] .n7411 ¶94
The inward man, viz. the inward eye, saw through the outward; as we in the other world shall need no sun, for we [shall] see in the divine sight, in the light of the peculiar nature. No heat nor cold had touched them; there had also no winter been manifest upon the earth, for in Paradise there was an equal temperature.n7411 ¶95
14. The tincture of the earth had been their delight and pastime; they had had all metals for their play, until the time that God had changed the outward world: no fear or terror had been in them, also no law from anything or to anything; for all had been free unto them. Adam had been their chief prince; and they had lived in the world and also in heaven, inhabiting in both worlds at once; Paradise had been through the whole world.n7411 ¶96
15. But seeing the divine providence did well know that Adam would not stand, seeing the earth was corrupted by its former prince; in that the wrath of God had moved itself; and amassed [or took] the essence into an impression; therefore God created all manner of fruits and beasts, also all sorts of medicines [ or sovereign healing] for the future sickness of man; and likewise all kinds of meat, that the man might have food, and raiment also in this world.n7411 ¶97
16. For he had determined to send another prince, by whom he would redeem man from his sickness and death, and purify and purge the earth through the fire of God, and introduce it into the holy (being), as it was when Lucifer was an angel, before it came into such a creature. [ Or creatural being]n7411 ¶98
17. And Adam was created only unto [or in] the divine image, which should be eternal; and though it was known in the wrath of God that man would fall, yet the Regenerator [or Restorer] was also known in God's love; to [Text, for] whom this hierarchy should be given for a royal possession, in Lucifer' s stead.n7411 ¶99
18. But that the fall might not proceed (or come) from the divine appointment *, God made man perfect, and created and ordained him unto Paradise, and forbade him the false lust, which the devil stirred up through the limus of the earth, in Adam's outward body, with his false imagination and hungry-desire.n7411 ¶100
* Or might not so much as appear to arise from the divine decreen7411 ¶101
19. And Adam was, before his Eve, forty days in Paradise in the temptation, before God made the woman out of him; if he had stood steadfast, then God had so confirmed him to eternity.n7411 ¶102
20. But that I write of forty days, contrary to the custom [and opinion] of other writers, is, that we have certain knowledge and sufficient ground of the same, not only by conjecture, but from another knowledge; of this also we will show you the types. As (first) of Moses upon Mount Sinai, when God gave him the Law; this was done in forty days, and Israel was tried whether they would continue in divine obedience; but seeing they made a calf, and an idol, and fell from God, therefore Moses must break the first Tables of the Law, signifying the first Adam in the divine law, who departed from it: therefore the same was broken from him, and he fell into the breaking [destruction] of his body, as Moses broke the Tables in pieces.n7411 ¶103
21. And God gave Moses another Scripture or writing upon a table [round ball or globe] of stone; which signifies the Second Adam (Christ), who should restore the first, and again introduce his Law into his table of the heart, viz. into the life, into the humanity, and write it with the living spirit in the sweet name JESU; thus the other law was also written, how God's love would destroy or break in pieces the anger; of which the Covenant in the Law was a type, as shall be hereafter mentioned in Moses.n7411 ¶104
22. The second figure of Adam in Paradise are the forty years in the wilderness; where Israel was tried in the Law with the heavenly manna, whether or not they would be obedient to God, that the anger might not so much devour them. The third figure is the true, real one, viz. Adam's hard encounter [combat] with Christ in the wilderness, where he stood in Adam's stead before the devil and God's anger, where he did eat forty days magically, viz. of the word of the Lord [Verbo Domini] ;n7411 ¶105
in which Adam also was tempted, whether he would remain wholly resigned unto God's will. Christ was, in Adam's stead, tempted in Adam's temptation, and with all that whatsoever wherein Adam was tempted, as shall be mentioned hereafter.n7411 ¶106
23. The fourth figure are the forty hours of Christ in the grave, where he awakened Adam out of his first sleep. The fifth figure are the forty days of Christ after his resurrection in the last proba, where the humanity was last of all tried, whether it would now stand, and be wholly resigned in God, being that death was destroyed, and the inward human life was new-born in God.n7411 ¶107
24. These five figures belong unto the five degrees of nature; from the first form of nature even to the fifth, viz. to the holy centre of the love-birth. If it were not too large we would set it forth very clearly. It shall be shown in its place.n7411 ¶108
25. These forty days Adam was tried in his innocencyn7411 ¶109
[Or stood in the proba], whether or not he would or could stand, to possess the throne of Lucifer, as a hierarch and prince of God. But seeing God knew that this would not be, he determined to move himself with his deepest love in this Adamical, angelical image of the inward holy man, which did disappear [vanish or withdraw] in Adam, and to regenerate him anew, viz. in the seed of the woman, understand in the love-desire's seed, wherein Adam should have impregnated, generated or brought forth himself in a magical manner. In this seed the mark or bound of the promised Covenant in [or with] Christ was set; who should restore the angel's image, viz. the divine man, as it is effected.n7411 ¶110
26. These forty days Adam, viz. the soul of Adam in the flesh, was tempted between three Principles; for each Principle drew the soul in the flesh, and would have the upper hand or dominion.n7411 ¶111
27. This was the right proba [trial] of what the free will of the soul would do; whether it would remain in the divine harmony, or whether it would enter into the selfhood. Here it was tried in soul and body, and drawn by all the three Principles; each would accomplish [or work forth] its wonders in him [with or by him].n7411 ¶112
28. Not that the three Principles did stand in unequal measure and weight in Adam, they were in equal weight in him, but not outside him; moreover the devil was very busy in God's anger in the first Principle, with his false desire; and introduced continually his imagination into the soul, and into the outward flesh, viz. into the limus of the earth, and insinuated it into the first Principle, viz. into the fiery property of the soul, even into the eternal nature; whereupon the first Principle in the soul was moved to speculate itself in the devil's imagination (or glass of fancy), viz. to contemplate in the magical birth how and what evil and good were, how it would relish and be, in the unlikeness of the essence *: whence the lust did arise in the soul.n7411 ¶113
* In the dissimilitude or various disparity of the properties which were without itself.n7411 ¶114
29. Namely, the earthly lust to eat of the manifold properties did arise in the outward part of the soul; and in the inward fiery part of the soul the lust of pride did arise, to know and prove evil and good; desiring to be like God, as the devil also did, when he would be an artist [or craftsmaster] in the magical birth; after which Adam here also lusted.n7411 ¶115
30. Albeit Adam did not desire to prove the first Principle, as Lucifer has done, for his lust was only bent to taste and prove evil and good, viz. the vanity of the earth. The outward soul was so awakened, that the hunger entered into its mother wherefrom it was drawn, and introduced into another source.n7411 ¶116
31. And when this hunger entered into the earth to eat of evil and good, then the desire in the Fiat drew forth the Tree of Temptation, and set it before Adam. Then came the severe command from God, and said to Adam, You shall not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, in that day that you eat thereof you shall die then7411 ¶117
32. And Adam also did not eat thereof in the mouth, only with the imagination or desire did he eat thereof, whereby the heavenly tincture disappeared, which stood in a fiery love; and the earthly one did awake in the outward soul's property, whereby the heavenly image was obscured.n7411 ¶118
33. Thus the magical birth was spoiled, and it could not then be; although Adam [had] stood in Paradise, yet it had not availed him [or them] ;for in the imagination or hunger after evil and good the outward man did awake in him, and obtained the dominion. Then Adam's fair image fell into a swoon, and drew near to the cessation of its operation [or rest] ;n7411 ¶119
for the heavenly tincture was captivated in the earthly desire; for the outward desire impressed into it its essence out of the vanity, whereby the man was darkened, and lost his clear pure steady [ constant, permanent] eyes and sight, which was from the divine essence, from whence before he had his sight [or seeing].n7411 ¶120
34. Now Moses said, that the Lord God said, it is not good that this man should be alone, we will make an help meet for him. When God had created all creatures, with the whole creatural host, Moses said, and God beheld all things which he had made, and lot it was very good;n7411 ¶121
and confirmed all to its propagation. But here he said of man, it is not good that he should be alone, for he saw his miserable fall, that he could not magically propagate himself; and said, we will make an help for him.n7411 ¶122
The Nineteenth Chaptern7411 ¶123
Of the building (framing) of the Woman; showing how Man was ordained to the outward Natural Lifen7411 ¶124
1. AND Moses says, God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept: and he took one of the ribs of his side, and built a woman thereof, and closed up the place with flesh (Gen. ii. 21). Moses says, the woman was made of a rib out of Adam's side: who will understand this, without divine light? But here lies the veil before the brightness of Moses' face, by reason of the unworthiness of the bestial man.n7411 ¶125
2. For we find that the woman was taken and formed in the Fiat out of Adam's essence, both in body and soul. But the rib betokens Adam's dissolution or breaking, viz. that this body should, and would, be dissolved; for in the place of this rib Longinus's spear must afterwards, when Christ was crucified, enter into the same, and tincture and heal the breach in the wrath of God with heavenly blood.n7411 ¶126
3. Now when Adam's hunger was set after the earthliness, it did, by its magnetic power, impress into his fair image the vanity of evil and good; whereupon the heavenly image of the angelical world's essence did disappear; as if a man should insinuate some strange matter into a burning and light-shining candle, whereby it should become dark, and at last wholly extinguish. So it went also with Adam, for he brought his will and desire from God into selfhood and vanity, and broke himself off from God, viz. from the divine harmony.n7411 ¶127
4. Even then he forthwith sank down into a swoon, into sleep, viz. into an unability, which signifies the death: for the image of God, which is immutable, does not sleep. Whatsoever is eternal has no time in it; but by the sleep the time was manifest in man, for he slept in the angelical world, and awaked to the outward world.n7411 ¶128
5. His sleep is [signifies] the rest of Christ in the grave, where the new regenerate life in Christ's humanity must enter into Adam's sleep, and awaken it again to the eternal life, and bring it out of time into the eternal being.n7411 ¶129
6. But the breaking [or dividing] of Adam's essence, when the woman was taken out of him, is the breaking or bruising of Christ's body on the cross, from the sixth hour unto the ninth; for so long was the Fiat in Adam's sleep in the separating of the man and woman; for in such a space of time the woman was completely finished [or brought forth] out of Adam into a female [person or] image.n7411 ¶130
7. And when Christ on the cross had again accomplished this redemption of our virgin-like image from the divided sex of male and female, and tinctured it with his heavenly blood in the divine love, he said, It is finished: for before, he stood in Adam's thirst. As Adam did thirst after the vanity, so Christ did now fill or satiate this thirst of vanity with the holy divine love-thirst, and turned about the will of the soul, that it might again introduce its thirst into God. And when this was brought to pass, he said, now, it is finished and converted. Christ turned back Adam in his sleep from the vanity, and from the man and woman, again into the angelical image. Great and wonderful are these Mysteries, which the world cannot apprehend; for it is as blind in them, as a man that is horn blind, is, to behold this world; but he that regards and finds them has great joy therein.n7411 ¶131
8. Eve is the right magical child, for she is the matrix in which the love-desire stood in Adam, viz. the magical impregnation and birth; she was Adam's paradisical rose-garden in peculiar love, wherein he loved himself; for the amassing [or conceiving] of the magical impregnation, or incarnation, or divine formation of propagation, was [or did stand] in the conjunction of both tinctures.n7411 ¶132
9. And, after the eating of the apple, God said unto them, The woman's seed shall bruise the Serpent's head.n7411 ¶133
The ground and corner-stone lies here in this matrix; for the woman's matrix wherein the divine formation stood, was, as to the right life, heavenly, being out of the heavenly essentiality, wherein consisted the right paradise.n7411 ¶134
10. But Adam with his imagination brought earthliness and vanity thereinto, viz. self-will; and then the holy part, viz. Venus's desire, which was the divine centre in the humanity, viz. the manifested loveword in the image of God, did disappear in this matrix; thereforen7411 ¶135
Eve, from this strange will introduced into the matrix, brought forth at first a self-willed proud murderer; for Adam, with his false imagination, had introduced this vanity, so also the devil's desire [thereinto].n7411 ¶136
11. But the divine love- will would not forsake this disappeared angelical matrix; and gave himself by promise thereinto with the dear and precious name of Jesus, who should again awaken it in the holiness's property; and bruise the head of the devil's insinuated desire and false rebellious will; that is, destroy, and take away the might of its life, and introduce it again, through divine love, into the first life. And even in this holy matrix, which the word and power of God did again awaken in the sweet name [of] Jesus in the seed of Mary in the bound of the Covenant, the Serpent's poison in the soul and flesh was destroyed.n7411 ¶137
12. And this is the seed of the woman: dear brethren, observe it, it is highly known. The aim of the Covenant of Promise was pight [or set] into this matrix: but Eve was not the same child; for the part of the heavenly matrix stood disappeared in her; but [yet it was] in the Covenant of God, as the dry rod of Aaron (which budded forth afresh) did typify unto us.n7411 ¶138
13. She was indeed the whole matrix of Adam, but the holy part was shut up in her; and [there] lived only the outward part of the outward world with evil and good, viz. the matrix of the third Principle, which had indeed a halfsoul-like property, but [captivated] in the prison of God's anger. The holy Covenant of love rested in the disappeared part, in the midst of the awakened anger; from which Covenant the prophetical spirit in the Old Testament spoke, and prophesied of the future opening (or manifestation) in the Covenant.n7411 ¶139
14. The greatest Mystery is to be understood in the formation of Eve; for a man must very entirely and intimately understand and apprehend the birth of nature, and the original of man, if he will see the ground; for she is the half Adam; not taken only and wholly out of Adam's flesh, but out of his essence, out of the female part: she is Adam's matrix.n7411 ¶140
15. The woman received no more from Adam's flesh and bones, save the rib in his side, and the half cross in the head, which was the life's birth-cross, whereon Christ destroyed death. The matrix of the heavenly part was in Adam, magical, that is, moving in the essence;n7411 ¶141
but the outward part of the outward world was made fleshy; and both were mutually bound [or espoused] to one another; as the time with the eternity. The holy part was in heaven, and [was] the heaven itself; and the outward fleshy part was in the outward world in Matrice Mundi [matrix of the third principle] .n7411 ¶142
16. Thus the female property was, in the Fiat, extracted out of Adam's essence, as his dearest rose-garden, and he kept the limbus, heavenly and earthly [celestial and terrestrial], according to the eternal Father's manifested property, viz. the fire-soul's matrix's property; and the woman [kept] the part of the spirit's soul's property; the woman had the centre of the angelical world in her disappeared part of the soul-like property, viz. the manifested loveword, viz. the fifth property of the eternal nature; and the man had in his limbus the divine fire-world, viz. the centre of the light-world, the centre of all essences.n7411 ¶143
17. The man's limbus, which he kept when the woman was made out of him, was the Father's property, according to all essences; and the woman out of [or proceed from] the man was the Son's property, according to all essences, understand, the heavenly part [both of the limbus and matrix]. Therefore Christ became man in the woman's part, and brought the man's part again into the holy matrix, so that the limbus and the female matrix were again one image [or person], viz. a manly virgin, above and in all the three Principles, as a creatural-formed God, in whom the eternal unformed God dwelt, with universal fullness, both in the formed, and outside the formed [divine creature or God-man] . for thus was Adam also, before his Eve, and so must we also be in Christ, if we would be the image and temple of God.n7411 ¶144
18. Now when the pregnant matrix was taken from Adam, the woman was every way formed with such members for propagation as she is at this day; and so Adam also. For before, when Adam was male and female, he needed no such members; for his birth was magical, his conception moving in the matrix [was to be] done through imagination; for the Fiat was manifest in him.n7411 ¶145
19. And the bestial worm's carcass of the bowels, with the formation of other inward principal members pertaining to the earthly life, was hung upon Adam instead of the female matrix, and the like worm's carcass was also hung upon the woman, instead of the heavenly limbus, that they might stuff in a deal of vanity, and live like the beasts, seeing they did so eagerly lust after evil and good.n7411 ¶146
20. Reason will object against me, and say: God created Adam in the beginning such a man, and even with all members, as he now is. Which, notwithstanding, it cannot make out or demonstrate, seeing the soul is ashamed of this bestial property. Also I would fain know of this self-full reason, whether or no such an Adam (if he were created so miserable, destitute, naked and bare, unto this bestial life) were created to eternal life, without defect, and also without need, distress, and death? And whether this sink [or fill your carcass of earthly flesh and blood] were the Paradise and temple of God; and how could he have been able to defend himself from hurt and ruin? For such a beast-like man may be drowned in the water, and burnt in the fire, and also crushed to pieces with rocks and stones.n7411 ¶147
21. But says thou, God did well know that it would be so with Adam, therefore he created him so at the very first? Against this the Scripture declares, saying, God created man in his image, yea, to the image of God created he him; not to the bestial image. What sin wouldn7411 ¶148
God have imputed or charged upon man, if he had created him in a bestial image? what then would the new birth avail him [to what end then should he be born again] ? The new birth contains in real sum, this: That the angelical image must be born again, which God created in Adam. God formed Adam in the image of God, and though he knew that he would not stand, yet he appointed him the Saviour, who would bring him again into the first image, and therein establish him for ever.n7411 ¶149
22. Now it plainly appears that Adam stood in the divine image, and not in the bestial, for he knew the property of all creatures, and gave names to all creatures, from their essence, form and property. He understood the Language of Nature, viz. the manifested and formed Word in everyone's essence, for thence the name of every creature is arisen.n7411 ¶150
23. Now, seeing he knew how the word of power was formed in every creature, thereupon we cannot esteem him bestial; he was without doubt angelical; for none other man shall arise, but such a one as Adam was before his Eve. God created him perfect, but he stood not in the proba; whereupon it must now follow, that God suffered him to fall into the outward magic; and ordained him to the image of this world; and set him into the natural life, viz. into the corruption and the new birth [degeneration and regeneration]. For in heaven there is neither male nor female, but all one kind, in peculiar love, without further propagation, in an eternal confirmation.n7411 ¶151
24. This therefore does set forth unto us that Adam died in Paradise, as God said unto him, if you eatest of the Tree, thou diest: He died to the holy [heavenly] image, and lived to the awakened bestial image.n7411 ¶152
For now, when Adam did awake from sleep, he was indeed still in Paradise, for the vanity in the flesh and soul did not yet actually and effectually work, and was yet dumb, still, and senseless, until they did eat of the forbidden fruit; and then the earthly dominion began to rise;n7411 ¶153
then the vanity awakened, viz. all the forms of the life, each in its selfhood, and forsook severally their mutual harmony, and forthwith heat and cold fell upon them [Adam and Eve] ; for the outward [image or being] did assimulate [or ensource] with the inward, and the heavenly image at last quite disappeared; which in Adam's sleep, and also in this awakening, did yet live both in Adam and Eve, but in a very obscure and impotent manner.n7411 ¶154
25. Adam, in his perfection, while he was man and wife, and had the magical conception in him, did amuse himself on (or imagine after) the beasts, and introduced himself into bestial lust, to eat and generate according as the beasts do: And so, likewise, the Fiat took in the same lust, and formed him in his sleep even as the lust was; and every member was formed in its place to the conjunction of the beast-like copulation;n7411 ¶155
for each desire has obtained its mouth to manifestation. Thus the image of God formed itself in the Verbum Fiat into such a beast as we are still to this day; and this same (was done) in itself; viz. man's own Fiat (viz. the first form of nature, which is the desire of God's manifestation), did effect it, and none other maker from without him.n7411 ¶156
26. We are not to conceive, that there was anything else upon Adam, which made his Eve out of him, or that formed them both to the outward natural life, save only the Verbum Fiat in them, their own very propriate, and not any alienate (or anything strange) from without them. As the first creation of Adam and all kinds of creatures was so brought to pass, the Verbum Fiat coagulated each ens, and the manifested word severed itself in the ens according to its property, and formed the creature according to its astrum and kind; where also, in every ens, the matrix was separated from the limbus, and formed into a male and female [into a he and she].n7411 ¶157
27. The picturing of God as a man in making Adam, and afterwards standing over Adam as he sleeps, and making a woman out of him, is more idolatrous than real; and God has earnestly forbidden, in Moses, to make the likeness of any God. For he is no image, save only in the creatures, according to the expressed formed Word, both according to the creatures of eternity, and of time: he is no [such] maker, but a former of the properties, a creator, and not [such a] maker.n7411 ¶158
28. The creating is the Fiat which amasses [or forms], and the Word in the power of the amassed [or conceived being] gives the distinction according to the ens. As the ens is, in the generation of the spirit, so a thing is formed;n7411 ¶159
for the body or substance of all things is nothing else but a signature or mansion according to the spirit. As the birth is in the ens, where the spirit forms itself;n7411 ¶160
so is likewise the body of all kinds of creatures, both in animals and vegetables. As we plainly see, that the first Creator, who has moved himself and brought himself into a creatural manifestation, has left in all creatures a power to their self-multiplication or increasing, propagation, and procreation; and incorporated the Fiat in them as a maker, for their own propriety [or most innate instinct].n7411 ¶161
The Twentieth Chaptern7411 ¶162
Of the Lamentable and Miserable Fall and Corruption of Mann7411 ¶163
1. Now when Adam did awake from sleep he saw his wife Eve standing before him, and took her unto him, for he knew that she was his own, that she was his matrix; and [he] cast the property of his desire upon her, as he had done before when he loved himself: So now also the fiery tincture of Adam's soul entered into the spirit's or light's tincture in Eve.n7411 ¶164
2. But they both stood yet in Paradise, in the garden in Eden, and knew neither evil nor good; for they lived yet in joy and delight, in the kingdom of heaven; and it was Eve's first longing to eat of good and evil: for Adam's desire had introduced and imprinted it into the magical image, while it was yet in Adam's essence; as a child receives a mark [or impress] in the womb, which the mother imprints on it.n7411 ¶165
3. Thus also Adam had impressed the false desire into his essence, whence the woman was made; therefore the woman so soon lusted after the vanity; as to this day, mere earthly lust of the flesh is found in most of them. So soon as this sex comes but to any years, the selfish lust [and will] does predominantly appear in pride and glistering shows of fleshly desires; and they soon long after the forbidden tree, contrary to the virgin-like modesty, chastity and angelical humility.n7411 ¶166
4. The abomination which Adam introduced into his matrix is so exceeding strong in them, that they are as 't were in naked shame before the image of God, which [image] God himself created inn7411 ¶167
Therefore they must be subject to the man, in that they are the cause that the vanity was enkindled, to which the devil also was a strong promoter.n7411 ¶168
5. For when he saw Eve, he then knew his insinuated desire in her, which he had introduced into Adam; the same did show forth and discover itself in Eve's lust. Therefore the devil came now in a strange form, viz. in the Serpent's essence, which was the most subtle beast, and laid himself on the Tree of Temptation towards Eve, that the introduced concupiscence in Eve, which the devil had also infected, did amuse itself upon the outward Serpent, and so one lust took another; whereupon Eve did strongly imagine and long after the forbidden fruit, which the devil persuaded her to eat; and then her eyes should be opened, and she be as God, and know evil and good.n7411 ¶169
6. Which indeed was true: this knowledge did stick in the fruit, for the essences were discordant and unlike therein; but he told her not that the enmity would awaken in the essences of her body, and that heat and cold, moreover sickness and death, would force into her. Herein he was silent, and fairly coloured it over, and drew her in by collusion; as if God had withheld some great thing from them, which she might find as a treasure; so craftily did he deceive Eve.n7411 ¶170
7. And when she yielded to discourse with the Serpent she was taken in the voice; for the devil infected the same with false delight, until he persuaded her she should be wise if she did eat thereof.n7411 ¶171
8. For the devil thought that if Eve should bring forth children in Paradise then his design would miscarry: they might then possess his angelical kingdom.n7411 ¶172
9. Now the question is, Wherefore the devil did deceive Eve by the Serpent only, and not by some other means? Could he not do it in his own form: why did he even speak through the Serpent to Eve? And wherefore did the Serpent address itself to the Tree, to persuade her against God's prohibition?n7411 ¶173
10. Here the veil lies before Moses his clear eyes, for he sets down the history very right. But how can an unilluminated mind understand it, in that he writes of the Serpent, saying, that the Serpent spoke with Eve, and deceived her, whereas indeed it cannot speak. And also is only a beast, without divine understanding, and in its selfhood cannot know the image of God; much less did the Serpent understand the heavenly powers, or the prohibition.n7411 ¶174
11. But hear what Moses says: The Serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made: Here the first question is, whence its subtlety came, that even the devil would choose to speak through its subtlety, and deceive Eve? Herein sticks the Mystery.n7411 ¶175
12. When God moved himself according to his expressed Word in the Verbum Fiat, according to both the inward worlds, viz. according to God's love and anger, according to the eternal nature of the darkness, and according to the eternal nature and power of the light, then all the properties in evil and good did amass [compacted] themselves; for the Fiat was the centre in all those properties, as well as in those wherein the divine power was manifest in holiness.n7411 ¶176
Now, according as each [central] point was opened, understand, according as the lubet to the manifestation of the Grand Mystery of all essences [was in every punctum], even so the Fiat, viz. the first form to nature did apprehend and bring forth an ens or limus out of the earth, and so also above the earth, in each magical astrum [star or planet], according to the degrees of severation. And so in the same ens there was a spirit according to the same degree or magical astrum, and the Fiat did figure and shape even such a body or corpus as the same spirit was.n7411 ¶177
13. Now, seeing that prince Lucifer did sit as a hierarch in divine pomp, and would domineer in divine power in the fire's might, above and in all, and contemned God's love and humility, and entered with his false desire into the essence of the expressed Word in the Fiat, as a juggler or wicked impostor, that would also form and make [according to his proud perverse will], thereupon he infected that same essence, according to the dark world's property, which came forth also in the Fiat into a compaction, viz. into an ens, wherein evil and good are mutually linked together. For he, the devil, as an apostate rebellious juggler, did desire the greatest subtlety [proceeding] from the centre of nature, and would domineer in the revealed magic in the Fiat.n7411 ¶178
14. And out of the like ens, [proceeding] from this infected ens (where evil and good was manifest in great power), the Serpent was created in the Fiat. Therefore Moses says very right, it was more subtle than all the beasts of the field;n7411 ¶179
for the devil's will, viz. his desire, which he introduced into that ens, whence it was created, was in it; it had the devil's subtlety and will. And as the devil was an angel in the beginning, and was from a good essence, and yet introduced himself into an evil one, so likewise the Serpent's ens was good before the devil's infection, before its creation; but in the devil's desire it was brought into a property of subtlety and craft.n7411 ¶180
15. For the devil's desire drew forth the compunctive stinging thorny sharp subtlety out of the centre of nature, and introduced it through the enkindling of the fire into the heavenly salniter, viz. into that property wherein he sat and was an angel; and here that very craft came forth along in the same ens into a compaction in the Fiat.n7411 ¶181
16. For the Serpent's ens was, as to one part, viz. as to the heavenly, a great power; as also there was a great heavenly power in the devil, for he was a prince of God; and so he brought his extracted subtlety and lies into a powerful ens, desiring to play his enchanting feats thereby as a peculiar [uncontrollable] god.n7411 ¶182
17. This the learned searchers of nature do in like manner understand, viz. that there lies excellent art, and also virtue, in the ens of the Serpent. If the devil's poison be taken from it, the greatest cure doth then lie in it for the healing of all fiery venomous hurts and distempers; also [the best antidote] against poison, and all whatsoever that has the semblance of a fiery poison; for therein the divine power lies in a fiery hunger, but hidden in the curse of the anger of God.n7411 ¶183
18. As God does dwell hiddenly in the cursed earth, so likewise is it here. Notwithstanding, it is given to the wise godly searcher of the art, and he need not be astonished or afraid of the curse; for he shall rule in divine power in faith over all creatures. If he were not so much captivated in a bestial and proud manner in the Serpent's essence our sense and meaning might be opened unto him, and he might here well find the arcanum [or secret] of the world.n7411 ¶184
19. This crafty Serpent was now in external show and semblance an exceeding well-favoured, comely, handsome, neat, fine, brave, pretty beastling, accurately dressed, and set forth according to the pride of the devil. Not that we are to conceive that the devil was a creator of the Serpent; but the Fiat was manifest in it according to God's great good power, arid also very potently manifest according to the power of his wrathful anger.n7411 ¶185
20. This Serpent was a living figure of the Tree of Temptation; like as the Tempting Tree was a dumb power [or lifeless resemblance], so the Serpent was a living power. And therefore the Serpent applied itself to this Tree, as to its likeness, even the likeness of its essence. Which the devil saw, and possessed the Serpent in the part of his infected and introduced poison, and armed its tongue, and spoke out of its great subtlety to Eve, so that she knew not the horrible enemy, and very hideous ugly guest, the devil.n7411 ¶186
21. And the devil therefore brought the Serpent to the Tree of Temptation, seeing he saw that Eve was taken much with beholding of the Tree, and fain would eat of its fruit, that so he might make Eve monstrous by the Serpent [Or, form strange imaginations of pride, in seeing the fair Serpent] ; and the true eye-mark [to reach the real understanding of the Serpent's deceiving Eve] is this:n7411 ¶187
22. Eve did now long after the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; for Adam had introduced this lust into his ens whence Eve was created. But now the command stood against it, and she feared God, and would not do contrary to the prohibition; therefore the devil cunningly insinuated into the Serpent's ens, viz. into the greatest subtlety;n7411 ¶188
and yet craftily put forth the great power and wit in the Serpent's essence, that Eve might see and know how prudent, wise and subtle the Serpent was; and hung there upon the forbidden tree, and it did it no hurt; and she looked upon the Serpent and set her mind amusing after it, in manner as a woman with child does amuse herself and strangely or monstrously form herself [in her mind] and brings such a figure upon the child. Even so did Eve amuse herself upon the wit and craft of the Serpent, and also upon its nimble agility and art, whereupon she longed to eat of the Tree; for the Serpent persuaded her by the devil's voice and speech, and pretended that it had its craft and art from the Tree.n7411 ¶189
23. Eve's essence was heavenly, but already somewhat poisoned and infected by Adam's imagination. Now, Eve's good desire of the good essence in her entered into the Serpent's great power and inward virtue, which it had from the heavenly essence, viz. from the good part of the ens of the earth; and the infected property of Eve, which Adam had insinuated and let in by imagination, entered into the Serpent's craft, viz. into the centre of the dark world, into God's anger. And on the other side, the devil's strong desire and imagination entered through the essence of the Serpent into Eve's essence; both by the sound and voice in their intercourse of speech, and also by the conjunction of both desires.n7411 ¶190
24. And here Eve's desire and the devil's desire were espoused [or united] in this conjunction; for the devil's desire made Eve's lust wholly monstrous, and did so egg or force her on in the lust till he overcame her; and she gave full consent thereto in her desire; she would fain also eat of the Tree of understanding and wise subtlety; and desired likewise to be, or to be made, so wise, prudent and crafty, as the Serpent.n7411 ¶191
25. For the devil said the fruit would not hurt, but the eyes of her sharp understanding would be opened; and they should be as God. This, Eve did like very well; that she should be a goddess, and wholly consented thereunto. And in this full consent she fell from the divine harmony, from the resignation in God, and from the divine desire, and entered with her own desire into the craft, distemper and vanity of the Serpent, and the devil.n7411 ¶192
26. Here, in this juncture [or point of time] the devil's desire took full possession of Eve's will, and introduced it into a serpentine substance; and even here Eve became monstrous in her own essence [according to the essence of the Serpent] ; and here the devil built up his fort, rampart and stronghold in the human essence; and here is the death of the heavenly essence, viz. of the heavenly essence or being; here the Holy Spirit of God departed from Eve her essence: thus in this point [of time] the heavenly part of man, viz. the heavenly limus, in the flesh, did disappear; and this is it which God said, in the day that you eatest thereof thou shall die the death (Gen. ii. 17).n7411 ¶193
27. When Eve had turned her will from the obedience of God, and introduced it into the Serpent's craft, then the power of the heavenly meekness and humility in the heavenly limbus did disappear; not that she fully received the dark world's essence into her essence; no, but as God said to her, you shall die, that is die or disappear, in [as to] the kingdom of heaven. For the kingdom of heaven receives no true only, when the light of the divine Principle extinguisheth, then that essence wherein it did burn, and from whence it shone, is dumb, and as 'twere dead, without feeling and understanding, as a nothing. Like as a candle burning in a dark place makes the whole room light, but if it goes out there is not the print or impression of it to be seen; its power enters into the nothing, in manner as God made all things of nothing.n7411 ¶194
28. Not that we are to understand that man's heavenly ens became a nothing; it remained in man, but it was as 'twere a nothing to man in its life; for it stood hidden in God; and to man was unapprehensible, without life. Nothing dies in God; but in the human life the holy ens did disappear.n7411 ¶195
29. Now when Eve did reach to the Tree, take the fruit, and pluck it off, [it was] the same she had already done by the earthly limus, and by the will of the soul, which desired the subtlety from the centre of nature; which subtlety [or discretion] she already perceived in her, in the centre, and yet [it] was not manifest in the divine power and in the resigned humility. In this essay the devil's desire reaches along in her monstrous image to the fruit; and when she took the fruit into the mouth, and did eat thereof; that her body's essence received this essence into itself; the human essence took the essence in the Tree.n7411 ¶196
30. And seeing she did not forthwith fall down and die, she thought it would not hurt her, for the anger-source still rested in her; and she persuaded Adam, that he also did eat thereof; seeing he saw that it hurt not Eve.n7411 ¶197
31. But now when they had eaten, the wrath of God's anger did awake in the monstrous image, viz. the properties of the dark world, viz. the devil's introduced desire, which now had its seat in the monstrous image, in the Serpent's essence. In this instant all the forms of subtlety and craftiness did awake in the human mystery [hiddenness];n7411 ¶198
for so long as man stood resigned in God, in the equal accord in the divine harmony, the heavenly part, viz. the life of the heavenly limus, penetrated the earthly limus; and the properties could not be manifest, for they were all in equal measure and weight; as the time is in God and God in the time.n7411 ¶199
32. But when man's own will began effectually and actually to work, then also the properties of the universal magical astrum began also to work in him, each [astrum or star] in its selfhood;n7411 ¶200
for the universal magical astrum lay in man, for he was created on the sixth day, in the sixth manifestation of the divine Mystery, as a limus of all beings; a limus or extern [or extracted] birth, whence all the creatures were created; an astrum of the universal astrum; for he should rule above all creatures of this world, and be lord over all creatures, and yet not be ruled or lorded over by any.n7411 ¶201
33. for he stood in equal essence; but now, every astrum of every essence of all the creatures in man do depart from their mutual accord, and each steps into its selfhood; whence the strife, contrariety and enmity arose in the essence, that one property does oppose itself against the other. Thus likewise the outward spirit of the outward astrum and four elements did presently domineer in them [Adam and Eve], and heat and cold were also manifest in their body; moreover, the property of all evil and good beasts: all which properties, before, did lie hidden.n7411 ¶202
34. Here the craft and subtlety of the Serpent was manifest, and the precious image was corrupted, and became, according to the limus of the earth, a beast of all beasts. Whereupon there are now so many and various properties in man, as one a fox, wolf, bear, lion, dog, bull, cat, horse, cock, toad, serpent. And, in brief;n7411 ¶203
as many kinds of creatures as are upon the earth, so many and various properties likewise there are in the earthly man; each of one or other; all according to the predominant stars [or planets] which make such a property in the seed, in the time of the seeding, by reason of their predomination or [potent influence] . That astrum which is most predominant in the constellation, that has its desire in the seed; and if the seed be sown, such a property is hatched forth in the earthly part of man.n7411 ¶204
35. Not that the whole man is such [a very brute beast in outward shape], but there is such a figure of the desire in the earthly essence; and the man must bear such a beast in the body, which stirs him up and drives him to the bestial property. Not that he has this form according to the outward [person] ; but [he has it] really, in the earthly essence: according to the outward [personal shape] he remains in the first formation [or platform].n7411 ¶205
36. Yet this beast does somewhat put forth its signature externally in everyone; if one do but heed and well mind the same, he may find it. Hence Christ called the Pharisees a generation of vipers, and the seed of serpents; also others he called wolves, ravening wolves, foxes, dogs and the like; for they were such in the earthly essence. And he taught us, that we must be born anew, and forsake this bestial property, and become as children, or we should notpossess the kingdom of God.n7411 ¶206
37. For as the essence is, in the body, even so the spirit doth figure and form itself internally, and the poor soul stands in this prison, bound and married to such a beast, unless that a man be born anew: for which ground [and end] God ordained the Circumcision in the Old Testament; and in the New the Baptism in the spirit of Christ.n7411 ¶207
38. Here we are highly to consider, what horror, lamentation and misery, anguish, fear and distress, did arise and awake in man; and was manifest as a false life and will in man. of which we have a type in the death of Christ, when he, upon the cross, destroyed the death in our human awakened property, and overcame [it] with the great love in his heavenly blood, which he introduced thereinto; that even then the earth, viz. the limus of the earth, whence Adam's outward essence was extracted, did tremble and shake at it. Now, when the great love forced [itself] into the human earth, wherein the anger of God, in the curse, was living and effectually working, [I say] when it now was to die, and to be changed into another source, it did tremble before this great love-fire;n7411 ¶208
like as the love-fire in Adam and Eve did tremble in the awakening of the anger in them; whereby they were astonished, and crept behind the trees in the garden, and were afraid. For the dread and horror of God's anger was awakened in their essence, and they knew their bestial properties.n7411 ¶209
The Twenty-First Chaptern7411 ¶210
Of the Impression and Original of the Bestial Man; and of the Beginning and Ground of his Sickness and Mortalityn7411 ¶211
1. WHEN Adam and Eve were become monstrous, the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the part of the heavenly limbus, departed;n7411 ¶212
for the part of the heavenly property disappeared in the soul, in which [part] the divine light shone, and in which the divine power of the holy tincture dwelt.n7411 ¶213
2. Understand, the power of the light departed from him into the centre, in manner as a shining light which flames forth from a candle, extinguisheth, and only the fire-source of the light remains; even so likewise only the magical fire-source of the soul's property remained, viz. the centre of the eternal nature, viz. the fire-world, and darkness.n7411 ¶214
3. And on the outward part of the soul the air-spirit, with its astrum, remained, wherein the light of the outward nature shone, which now the fire- soul must make use of ; for the Fiat was enraged in the wrath of God, viz. in the fiery property of the soul, and also of the body;n7411 ¶215
and in a fiery hunger, in the awakened flagrat of God's anger, had entered into and taken possession of the essence in soul and body, and with hard attraction did impress itself in the essence of the substance, in the limbus [limus] of the body; whereupon the flesh became gross, hard, thick and corruptible.n7411 ¶216
4. For in the flagrat of the wrath all the properties of each astrum, according to the property of all the creatures, did awake in the essence, whence the enmity, antipathy and contrariety did arise in the essence of the body and soul, so that one property is against another, one taste against another's, for all departed out of the temperament; thence arose in them pain, tormenting malady, and sickness.n7411 ¶217
5. For if an opposite essence enters into another, it makes an enmity, and a hateful overmastering and destroying, each the other. One property annoys, weakens and destroys another, whence the death and dissolution of the body is arisen.n7411 ¶218
6. For whatsoever stands not in the temperature cannot subsist eternally; but whatsoever stands in the temperature, that has no destroyer; for all properties do [there] mutually love one another: and in the love is the growth and preservation of the life.n7411 ¶219
7. And we are here fundamentally to understand how the gross properties in the wrath of the Fiat in the essence of the body have obscured and wholly shut up the heavenly essentiality in the Sulphur, so that the heavenly man was no longer known; as lead does hold the gold's-spirit availed in itself; that it is not known [or discerned].n7411 ¶220
8. For the desire, viz. the first form of nature, which is the Fiat, has swallowed, in the grossness, the heavenly part both in man and metals, as also in all herbs, and all other fruits. All the sovereign power of [or from] the holy world's essence lies shut up in the wrath and curse of God, in the dark world's property in the earth; and springs forth by the strength of the sun, and the light of the outward nature, in the essence, through the curse and wrath;n7411 ¶221
which budding or pullulation gives a sovereign power and healing virtue for the malignant essence in the living bodies, whence the physician is arisen, who seeks and learns to know the virtue [and temperature thereof], that he may resist and remedy the opposite essence in the body; which, notwithstanding, is only a lukewarm and faint sparkle thereof; if he be not able and skilful first to separate the gross raw wildness (which is from the dark world's property) from his cure.n7411 ¶222
9. For if the captivated essence of the heavenly world's property may be redeemed from the curse and wrath of nature, then it stands in the temperature; and if it then so comes into a living body it does awaken also the shut-up [or imprisoned] life of the heavenly world's ens [Essence or substance], if that likewise be in the body; and expels the wrath, whereby the sickness is destroyed, and the essence enters into the temperature.n7411 ¶223
10. That this is certainly thus, we may see by Adam and Eve, when the wrath did awaken in their essence, and the Fiat did impress the bestial properties, and formed (them) in the essence, that when the soul, viz. the image of God, did experimentally know this, it was ashamed of the bestial deformity, and of its being in a bestial vessel, viz. in another Principle.n7411 ¶224
11. For the outward part of the soul, viz. the air with its astrum, did arise and obtain the upperhand; as we may plainly see that amongst the greatest part of men the outward part of the soul bears the sway and domination over the whole body, in that the bestial man does seek and labour only after the pleasure of this world, viz. after external honours, authority and beauty, and also how to pamper, fill and gluttonise the beast; and so to vapour and proudly prank with the beast, as with a god, and yet it is only a corruptible, evil beast, in which the real true man lies shut up, without life.n7411 ¶225
12. Also this gross beast shall not possess the kingdom of God; and also it profits not at all (John vi. 63). But [the kingdom of God profits] the hidden man [alone], which lies shut up in this beast, as the gold in the gross ore. Which [hidden inward] man the gross beast scarce regards or gives any respect unto, save only that it does sometimes a little play the hypocrite with it, and comforts it with devout words, but exalts itself in its place, as a proud peacock; and bravely trims, adorns and fattens his beast, that the devil may have a horse to ride upon, and thereby mock God: and he rides thereupon in the vanity [of this world], in the kingdom of God's anger, as upon a false whore which desires to live in its own self-full might and wit.n7411 ¶226
13. For such a [beast] the Serpent's craft did awaken and stir up in Eve, in her awakened bestial, monstrous property; that now almost every man carries a beast in the body, which does plague, molest and burden the poor captive soul, whereby it does make itself also monstrous, and amuse itselfon the beast, and brings itself into a bestial figure; which, so long as it has this image and figure in it, cannot see or feel the kingdom of God. It must be again transmuted into an angel's form, or else there is no remedy for it; therefore says Christ, Unless you be born anew, you shall not see the kingdom ofn7411 ¶227
14. The enclosed body of the heavenly part must be again born anew in the water of the heaven, viz. in the pure element's water, in the matrix of the water, and in the spirit of Christ out of the heavenly essence; that the soul's holy part of the angelical world may be revived and quickened, and live and work in its disappeared, and again new-born, body in the divine heavenly essence; and therein receive its food from the divine power of the second Principle. Otherwise the heavenly image, which God created in Adam, is not capable of the kingdom of God; and without the same also it cannot possess it. No glistering shows of devout hypocrisy, flattery [seeming holiness, or soothing the mind with an outward application of Christ's merits] or tickling consolations, do avail anything; it must be born [anew] or [be] quite forlorn; for the pearl-tree is withered in Adam and Eve, it must re-obtain divine essence, and die to the beast; or else it cannot spring forth and bear fruit for the soul to eat.n7411 ¶228
15. Now when Adam and Eve were awakened in the bestial property the beast stood then naked and bare; for before, the heaven's image did wholly penetrate the outward man, and clothed it with divine power; for the beast was not afore manifest. This property lay hidden in the temperature, as likewise it is so, outside the creature; but now, when the image of the heavenly essence did disappear, then the beast, viz. the bestial property, was manifest; so that now the poor soul, which was from the first Principle, stood forth encompassed with this beast, wholly naked and bare.n7411 ¶229
16. But if the beast had been manifest in the beginning of man, then it had also brought its clothing along with it from its essence, as other beasts did. But the man was not created unto the bestial life; and though God knew that it would so come to pass (for which end he created so many kinds and sorts of beasts for his food and raiment), yet he created man in and unto the true image of God out of the heavenly essence; so that if this image fell he might again bring it, through a new motion and regeneration, into its first state, as it is brought to pass in Christ.n7411 ¶230
17. The scope and eye-mark of our writing is, to search out the image of God; how it was created, and how it is corrupted, and how it shall come again into its first estate: thereby to understand aright the new birth out of Christ, and to know the inward and outward man, even what the mortal and immortal [man] is, and how he is become mortal; and what he is to do that he may come again into his first estate.n7411 ¶231
The Twenty-Second Chaptern7411 ¶232
Of the Original of Actual Sin, and the Awakening of God's Angern7411 ¶233
1. THE Scripture says, God has made all things by his Word, and without the same, nothing was made which was made. Out of his expressed Word (which was essential in the Verbum Fiat) all things came forth into formings: first into an ens, or desire of a property, and out of the same property into a compaction of Sulphur, Mercury and Salt, as into a formed nature;n7411 ¶234
and out of the same ens in the formed nature the Word becomes a creatural life; and brings itself forth out of the compaction of Sulphur, Mercury and Salt out of the body, that is, it manifests itself in a plain, visible being; to which end God has created nature andn7411 ¶235
2. Thus each creature has a centre to its re-expressing, or breathing forth of the formed Word, in itself both the eternal and the temporal creatures; the unrational, as well as man. For the first ens was spoken forth out of God's breath through the Wisdom, out of the centre, to fire and light, and taken into the Fiat, and brought into a compaction.n7411 ¶236
3. This same ens is out of the eternity, but the compaction of the four elements is out of time. Thus an eternal [ens] lies hidden in everything in the time, in all things with life or without life, in elements and creatures, in vegetative and un- vegetative. The first ens is in every thing, whence the form of compaction (which is arisen from the time) was spoken forth out of the spiritual world's being, as an eternal ens out of the eternal- speaking Word, through the Wisdom, into a time, viz. into a formed essence according to the spiritual ens; which ens cannot be destroyed by any element or thing whatsoever.n7411 ¶237
4. And although the elemental compaction, viz. the body (which the ens has attracted to itself; that is, breathed it forth from itself as an external degree) does vanish and come to nothing, (for it has a temporal beginning), yet the first ens cannot perish. As we also see that all things enter again into their mother from whence they are arisen and come forth, viz. into the four elements.n7411 ¶238
5. Now in this consideration we find the true ground of sin's original: Seeing that the living, powerful, understanding, speaking Word was breathed forth out of all the three Principles into the ens of man's image, for his understanding, that he should and could rule the properties of the compaction of Sulphur, Mercury and Salt; but he has now introduced this understanding, viz. the speaking, powerful Word again into the compaction of time, viz. into the earthly limus; where also the Fiat of time is awakened in the body, and has taken the understanding, viz. the inspired breath [sound or harmony], captive in itself; and placed itself master over the understanding.n7411 ¶239
6. So that we do now see, by woeful experience, how it is now with us; that when we would speak (albeit the understanding Word does [idea or] conceive itself in the inward ens, and desires to manifest the truth), yet the awakened vanity in the earthly limus of the body does soon forthwith catch it, and [cunningly blends] and works it forth into its own property [or serpentine subtlety] ; so that the word of the human understanding does breathe forth lies, iniquity, malice, falsehood, and such cunning vanity and foppery, in which voice the devil's desire does mix itself, and makes it to a substance of sin, which the kingdom of God's anger does receive.n7411 ¶240
7. For in what property every word does form and manifest itself in man's speech, when he speaks it forth, let it be either in God's love, viz. in the holy ens, or in the ens of God's anger, of the same it is again received when it is spoken. The false word proceeding from the false ens being infected by the devil, and sealed to destruction, is also taken into the Mystery of the wrath, viz. into the property of the dark world. Every thing enters with its ens into that whence it takes its original.n7411 ¶241
8. Seeing then the speaking Word is a divine manifestation, wherewith the eternal Word of God has manifested itself; and that this same speaking Word is inspired into man, we are therefore here to consider what man does manifest with this speaking Word. Understand it thus: if the human lubet and desire (which is the Fiat or the creating of the human word) does conceive the form of the word in the holy ens, viz. in the heavenly part of the humanity, then the word sounds [ Or speaks] from a holy power, and the mouth speaks truth.n7411 ¶242
9. But if it be from the vanity, from the Serpent's craft, which Eve imprinted into herself; and thereby awakened its subtlety, then the word sounds from the ens of the dark world, viz. it proceeds from the centre to the fire-word; and thereinto also it enters (in its end) [Ens] when it goes forth out of the form, viz. out of the mouth, and wherever it goes it brings forth fruit.n7411 ¶243
10. If it enters into another man's hearing, in whom the hunger of craft and vanity stands in open desire, it is soon received as into a fruitful soil, and takes deep spreading root, and brings forth such evil fruit; whence also such sharp words and stinging taunts of the devil are hatched in the devilish essence.n7411 ¶244
11. But if it proceeds forth empty and bare only, into the false imagination, then it ascends into the will of the mind, and conceives itself in the mind into a substance, for a seat of the devil's desire, even for his murdering fort which he has in man.n7411 ¶245
12. But if the false word be uttered against a holy man, in reviling and reproaching him, and the holy man will not let it take place in him, and not stir or move himselfin the evil part of his property with the like evil word, then the wrath of God receives it from without the man, and is thereby mightily enkindled. And not only the inward ens of God's anger according to the spiritual dark-world's property is thereby enraged, but also the outward ens of the wrath in turba magna is inflamed, and hangs over the wicked man's head, and does even encompass him; and he is therewith taken and possessed, as if he sat in the hellish [flames of ] fire.n7411 ¶246
13. of which Christ said, that when the wicked did curse us we should bless him, that is, echo forth the word of love against his fiery word, and not suffer his malicious word to enter into us, for to take root; and then it goes back again and apprehends the wicked reviler himself; for Paul said, we heap fiery coals upon his head.n7411 ¶247
14. for every word of man proceeds from an eternal ens; either from the ens of God's love, or from the ens of God's anger; and if now it be brought forth out of the ens, viz. out of its own place or mother, it will have again a place of its rest, wherein it may work.n7411 ¶248
15. Now if it cannot take rest and work in its likeness, outside the wicked man, (who has awakened and brought it forth out of his ens, and introduced it into a sound, or wordy substance), then it catches or surrounds its expressor [or author] who has brought it into a substance, and enters again with its root into its mother whence it did arise; that is, with the enkindled spirit, and with the substance (of its contrived matter) it does lay hold of and apprehend the inventor's [expressor] body; viz. the outward essence of the outward sulphur.n7411 ¶249
16. For every word, when it is expressed, is outwardly made and formed; for in the expressing or pronouncing thereof the outward spirit, viz. the outward part of the soul, receives it to its own substance; and afterwards, being enkindled in the wrath, and infected by the devil in its coming forth, in its witty glancing subtlety of the Serpent, does enter again into the soul and body of the monstrous image; and works according to its property, enkindled and infected by the devil, and continually brings forth such evil fruits and words: as we plainly see that out of many a wicked mouth nothing but vanity proceeds.n7411 ¶250
17. Moreover, we have a very great and weighty point here to consider of, concerning the Serpent's craft: that if the devil has infected the word (when it is born in the heart and formed in its ens, and has taken possession of the will, and made it substantial) this Serpent's craft does then hold and entertain the same in the devil's murdering fort, as a fine adorned pleasant brat;n7411 ¶251
as the Serpent, lying on the Tree, spoke very pleasingly and takingly with Eve, until it could, by its friendly intercourse, catch her in the desire. Even so likewise the false, crafty, conceived Serpent's-word, which proceeds from the false heart, does hold forth itself as a very lovely eloquent persuasive syren, and calls itself holy, till it can discover man's desire set open for it; there it lays open its very heart, and enters into the desire [of him], and makes itself a place to work [in], and to re-procreate [its like].n7411 ¶252
18. Therefrom now do come the false close backbiters, talebearers, perverters and wrong interpreters of other men's sayings, secret liars, who are very fair before, and behind are a serpent; revilers, and foul-mouthed slanderers who take away a man's good name from him;n7411 ¶253
and in this false, smooth, and well-coloured and adorned Serpent's-property, the devil has his Council Chamber, his school, where he teaches the children of Eve his art, viz. juggling delusions, foppery, pride, covetousness, envy, anger, and all vices and abominations proceeding from the abyss of the dark- world's property.n7411 ¶254
19. Thus the devil rules man in body and soul by the crafty essence of the Serpent, and works abomination with abomination, iniquity with iniquity, sin with sin. And this is even the first original of actual sin: that Eve and Adam did introduce the Serpent's crafty essence (which the devil had infected) into their [will and] desire; and so made themselves forthwith monstrous in the Serpent; whereupon the dark-world's essence did awake in them, that so soon as this was brought to pass, the will did imagine into this monstrous property, and formed itself into a substantial word.n7411 ¶255
20. Even thus the word was now also manifest in man in the property of God's anger, viz. in the dark- world's ens; and thus man does now speak lies and truth; for there is a twofold ens in him, viz. one from the dark world, awakened and stirred up by the desire of the Serpent and the devil; and one from the heavenly limus which is now stirring in man, wherein the free will takes the word, that is, whence it does generate a fruit out of the divine expressed and formed word, which is again received of the likeness, either in heaven or hell, that is, in the darkness or light.n7411 ¶256
21. For the two worlds are in each other as one. The wicked forms and makes [for] God a good word in his wrath unto death, viz. unto the sting of death and hell; and the holy man forms and makes [to] God, out of his good ens, a good word unto the holy life and operation. As the Scripture speaks very clearly, the holy is to God a sweet sapour unto life, and the wicked a sweet sapour unto death, viz. to the ark world.n7411 ¶257
22. Now every man is a creator [or framer] of his word's powers and doings; that which he makes and frames out of his free will, the same is received, as a work of the manifested word, into each property, in the likeness.n7411 ¶258
23. For God's Word is also manifest in the dark world; but only according to its property, as the Scripture says, such as the people is, such a god they also have. God's word is manifest in all things, in each thing according to its ens, whence the free will proceeds; the free will is the creator or maker, whereby the creature makes [forms and works] in the manifested Word.n7411 ¶259
24. There is no herb or thing whatsoever that can be named, wherein there lies not an ens from the manifested Word of God, an ens both according to God's Love and Anger, according to the dark and light- world; for this visible world was breathed forth out of this same Word. Now each ens of the forth-breathed Word has a free will again to breathe forth out of its ens a likeness according to itself.n7411 ¶260
25. But this is now the greatest evil, that the ens in its centre is departed out of the likeness [and harmony] of the property into an elevation, viz. out of one only ens into many entities, into many properties; of which the devil, being a hierarch of the place of this world, and also the curse of God upon the earth, is [a] cause, which curse man stirred up and awakened.n7411 ¶261
26. For now, an evil ens, which is from the awakened property, does infuse itself into a good vessel, and corrupts the vessel whence the free will should draw from a good property; but the evil does mix itself into the good, and both come forth again in the formed word, into a substance; as an evil man does oftentimes stir up an evil word work in a good man, which he never before conceived [or purposed] in his will.n7411 ¶262
27. For the anger is become stirring [or quick] in the human ens, and adheres to the good ens, and the will of the fire-soul is free, it conceives [forms] as soon in the ens of anger as in the ens of love; nay, in many a one the love-ens is wholly impotent and as 'twere dead or extinct. He works only from the craftiness of the Serpent, fruit unto God's anger, and though his mouth does flatter in the Serpent's craft, and make a devout show of the holy Word, and sets forth itself as an angel, yet it is only the ens and form of the crafty Serpent in the light of the earthly nature, and the man deceives himself.n7411 ¶263
28. Therefore Christ says, unless that you be converted, and become as children, you cannot see the kingdom of God. The free will must wholly go out from the ens of the Serpent, and enter again, in the spirit of Christ, into its heavenly ens, which did disappear in Adam, and again awaken and stir up this ens in the hunger of its desire, that it also may be again awakened and born unto a living ens in the new regenerated Word in the humanity of Christ, and which did arise and powerfully quicken itself in the great love-property, in the man's property in the person of Christ: where also the free will becomes a new innocent child, and neither wills nor lets in then7411 ¶264
Serpent's craft, otherwise the free will cannot form and manifest God's holy Word in itself the free will must draw only out of the good ens, if it will work and live in the holy Word.n7411 ¶265
29. Now understand aright our writing concerning the Serpent's craft, and its adorned art and false virtue, [I say] understand our very profound and high meaning, opened out of the counsel of God, thus: The Serpent's ens and original was a virgin of heavenly pomp, a queen of heaven, and princess of the beings of God, apprehended and formed in the Fiat of the divine desire, through the fire in the light. In like manner the hierarch Lucifer was so, and prince Lucifer sat in heavenly pomp in the Serpent's ens, who had infected the ens out of which the Serpent was created, and therein awakened the dark-world's property, viz. the centre of the eternal nature, whence evil and good do take their original. But when the good did in the fire sever itself into the light, and the evil into the darkness, the Serpent's ens, which was good, was then infected, filled and possessed with the darkness; and from hence comes its craft.n7411 ¶266
30. For even such a craft the devil desired, which also took him in the eternal- speaking Word, in such a property, and confirmed him therein to eternity. For it is also a wonder in God how an evil could come to be out of a good, in order that the good might be known and manifest; and the creature might learn to fear before God, and hold still to the spirit of God; that he alone might act and work in the eternal-speaking Word, and make and do what he please with and by the creature.n7411 ¶267
31. And to this end Lucifer was swallowed up in the wrath, seeing his free will went forth from the resignation and departed from God's spirit, into the centre, to be its own self-full maker and creator; that the angels now have an example in this revolted fallen prince and puissant hierarch; for the kingdom of God, which is [peculiarly and properly] called God's kingdom, stands in the deepest humility and love, and not at all in the wrathful fire's-might, but in the light fire's- might, viz. in power.n7411 ¶268
32. But the devil's kingdom, after which he longed and laboured, stood in the wrathful fire's-might, but the same was, essentially, taken from him in his place, and he was spewed out into the eternal hunger of the darkness.n7411 ¶269
33. And that he had infected and possessed the ens of the Serpent, which was so crafty, may be seen in its body, which is only a dry hungry skin, and fills itself with poison in the tail, in which property the great craft arises; and therefore the Serpent carries the poison in the tail (which may soon be pulled off), in that the same in the beginning was introduced into its virgin-like ens.n7411 ¶270
34. For the Serpent is therefore called a virgin according to the right of eternity, because it has both tinctures, which is in no kind of earthly creature besides; but it is now in the curse of God. Yet if the artist knew what its pearl was, he would rejoice at it: yet by reason of the world's false desire, which seeks only the false magic, it remains hidden; also [it is not manifest] that the wicked may bear his rebuke.n7411 ¶271
35. For the pearl of the whole world is trodden under foot; and there is nothing more common than the same, yet it is hidden; in order that the holy ens might not be introduced into an ungodly one, which is not worthy of it; and so God's power and Word in the virginlike essence be thereby brought into a serpentine [ens], as it is to be understood in the Serpent: enough, here, for our school-fellows.n7411 ¶272
36. Thus we do fundamentally understand the original of sin's birth; how sin was borne and opened in the human word; and how God is provoked to anger in his expressed Word by the human reexpressing. For man bears the Word, which created heaven and earth, in his ens, for the same Word is brought to substance.n7411 ¶273
37. Now God has inspired into man's ens, viz. into the formed compacted Word, the living soul, viz. the original [Or understanding] out of all the three Principles, as a spirit of the formed Word. This understanding has now power and might to re-conceive, and to generate again, a formal voice in the ens, viz. in the formed compacted Word.n7411 ¶274
38. But seeing the Serpent's craft, viz. the devil's introduced desire, became manifest in the ens of Adam and Eve, viz. in their compacted and formed word; thereupon the free will does now draw forth from this Serpent's essence mere adder's poison and death, and forms its word therein, unless the holy ens or seed of the woman be again awakened in the new-born love of God in Christ; then the free will may conceive in this same holy ens, and bruise and tread under foot the head of the Serpent's-and-devil's-ens in the anger of God; that is, reject and abhor the evil will, which desires to idea and imprint itself from the Serpent's ens, in the formation of the words, and bruise it in the will of the thoughts, with the ens of the woman, viz. of Christ, and esteem it as the devil's mire and dirt; which, in the children of God, is a continual combat and strife between the ens of the Serpent in the flesh, and between the regenerate ens of the heavenly part.n7411 ¶275
39. Also know this: Every thought which is formed in the will, so that a man consents unto lies, or anything else which is false, or if his will has conceived [and contrived] anything that is unjust, and he brings that contrivance into the desire, that he would very willingly do it, or express it in the false evil-formed word, if he could or knew how, and yet must let it alone, either for fear or shame; this same is all sin, for the will hath formed itself in the Serpent's ens.n7411 ¶276
40. But understand it well: if a good will does conceive [ Or form itself] in a good ens, and yet the evil desire doth adhere to it, and wills to poison the good; if then [I say] the good conceived will overcomes the evil, and casts it out, that the evil cannot also be formed or received into the compaction or substance; it is no sin. And though the evil desire which adheres to the good be sin, yet if the good will does not close with it and bring it into substance, but rejects it out of the good will, as an evil, then the sinful desire cannot come into essence, and the good will has not hereby wrought any evil, if it has not consented to the craft of the Serpent.n7411 ¶277
41. Every sin is born of the strange ens, if the free will departs from the ens, wherein God has created it. The sin which is conceived in the will in false desire, and brought to essence in the ens of the will, so that man would fain do wickedly or unjustly if he could but bring his intent to pass, is also great in the sight of God; but ifit proceeds so far as to hurt and injure anyone by word or deed, then the sin is double;n7411 ¶278
for it is formed in its own ens, and forms itself also in that whereinto it introduces the false word, so far as the false word in its speaking finds a place of rest to work [and bring forth its evil fruit] .n7411 ¶279
42. And therefore the holy word shall judge the false; as also at the end of this time the holy word shall cast out from itself all false idol opinions, and all whatsoever that has been formed in the Serpent's ens, and give them to the dark world.n7411 ¶280
43. All those that take or conceive the word in them, in their devilish and serpentine ens, and use it against God's children, in whom the holy ens is manifest, and do stir up also an offence [or occasion of stumbling] in the children of God, that the free will in them does also conceive itself in the Serpent's ens, viz. in anger and averseness, where always the holy ens does likewise form itself, and the spirit of zeal arises: these false authors, beginners and causers do all sin against the Holy Ghost.n7411 ¶281
44. For they do extremely despite and defy Him, that He must even proceed forth, through the anger of the children of God, whereby He is stirred up, and of tentimes shows Himself in the turba of the children of God, and falls upon the neck of the wicked. As may be seen by Elias, and Moses, and also by Elisha, who cursed the boys, that the bears came out and tore them to pieces, for thus the sword of God comes forth through the mouth of the saints. If the Holy Spirit be extremely displeased, and set into a fiery zeal, then He awakens turba magna, which draws the sword against a wicked people and devours them.n7411 ¶282
45. Thus understand it in its full scope and meaning: Man has God's Word in himself; which created him; understand, the Word has imprinted and formed itselfwith the creating, both in its holiness and also in the anger; and that also in [or out of] the outward world, for the limus of the earth, or the earth itself;n7411 ¶283
was amassed and compacted through the Word, so that the formed Word, which took its beginning in the divine desire, viz. in the Fiat, is an exhalation forth-breathed from the spirit of God out of love and anger: therefore it is evil and good, but the evil was hidden, and as it were wholly swallowed up in the light, as the night in the day.n7411 ¶284
46. But the sinful desire in Lucifer and Adam has awakened the anger, so that it is become manifest essentially. Now the gates of the formed Word, both in love and anger, do stand open in the earth, and also in the limus of the earth, viz. in man, and also in the free will of man; whatsoever he does now form and amass in his free will, that [same] he has made, be it either evil or good.n7411 ¶285
47. But now the evil shall, in the judgement of God, be separated from the good; and in what part [either of the evil or the good] the human understanding, viz. the soul, shall be found, thereinto it must enter, with all whatsoever it has done, as into its own made habitation. And therefore Christ says, their works shall follow them, and be purged (or proved) by the fire. Also at the end, when the books of the essence shall be opened, they shall he judged according to their works. For the work, be it evil or good, does embrace the soul, unless the soul does wholly depart [from the evil] and destroy it again, by reconciliation of his offended and wronged brother, and drown the substance in the blood and death of Christ, else there is no remedy.n7411 ¶286
48. Therefore a man must well consider what he will speak; for he speaks from the formed ens of God's manifestation; and well bethink and ponder with himself before he intends [or conceives in the will] to do anything; and by no means consent unto any false back-bitings, nor approve by a yea, neither privately nor openly.n7411 ¶287
49. For all forged tales and sharp taunts proceed from the Serpent's ens; all cursings, and swearings, and stinging girds, proceed from the Serpent's ens; yea, though they be but in jest, yet the Serpent's ens has stuck itself with them to the good, and compacted them with the word. Therefore Christ says, swear not at all: let your speech be, yea, yea; nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these comes of evil; that is, it is born of the Serpent's ens.n7411 ¶288
50. All cursers and swearers have introduced their free will, and will introduce the poor soul into the vanity of the Serpent's ens, and form their curses and oaths, with all their lewd wanton talk, which is wrought in the Serpent's ens, and sow into God's anger; and on the contrary, all God's children who are in right earnest do form their words in the holy ens; especially the prayer, when the free will of the soul does amass or conceive itself in the holy ens (which is opened by Christ's humanity), then it forms the true essential word of God in itself, so that it comes to substance.n7411 ¶289
51. Therefore Saint Paul says, the Spirit of God does mightily intercede for us in the Sight of God, as it pleases Him; for the Spirit of God is formed in the desire of the holy word; He is taken (or apprehended), and this taking or receiving is that which Christ said, He would give us his flesh for food, and his blood for drink.n7411 ¶290
52. The soul's will takes Christ's ens, and in Christ's ens the Word of Christ became man, which the soul's desire or Fiat does receive or impress into its holy ens [that] disappeared in Adam. And here Adam arises in Christ, and becomes Christ [the second Adam or the Anointed one] according to the heavenly ens and divine Word, and from this ens of Christ proceeds forth divine knowledge, out of the Word of God.n7411 ¶291
53. Thus the children of God are the Temple of the Holy Ghost, which dwells in them, and so they speak God's word; and without this there is no true knowing or willing, but mere fable and Babel, a confusion of the crafty Serpent.n7411 ¶292
54. Therefore Christ called the Pharisees, a seed of serpents, and a generation of vipers, and although they were the High Priests, yet he knew them to be so in their essence, for they had formed their will in the Serpent's ens. They carried the words of Moses in their mouth, and therein they mixed the Serpent's ens; as many still do to this day; where the incarnate devil carries God's word upon his tongue; and yet does only hide the Serpent's ens thereby, and introduces the diabolical ens into the literal word, whence Babel, the mother of all spiritual whoredom, is born, a mere verbal contention and wrangling about words, where the ens of the devil and the Serpent does oppose the divine ens in the formed divine Word.n7411 ¶293
55. But so it must be, that the formed and conceived word in God's children may be stirred up, whetted and exercised, and the truth come forth to light. Dear brethren: this is the inheritance which we have received from Adam and Eve; and that is the cause that the body must die, and wholly putrify, and enter again into its first ens; for the Serpent's ens must be wholly done away: it cannot inherit the kingdom of God.n7411 ¶294
56. The first ens in the limus of the earth, which was coagulated in the Verbum Fiat, must be wholly renewed in the spirit of Christ, if it will possess the kingdom of God. But if it remains captivated in the Serpent's ens it shall never be any more manifest: understand the holy ens, which disappeared in Adam, and was captivated in the Serpent's ens, whereby death came into the flesh.n7411 ¶295
57. Therefore a man must consider what he speaks, thinks and doeth, lest he conceive his thoughts in the Serpent's ens, and frame a will in the mind, in the ens of the Serpent; for else the devil does set himself therein, and hatches a basilisk, viz. a hellish form in then7411 ¶296
58. For all wrath which is conceived in man for revenge does primarily arise in its centre out of the nature and property of the dark world, viz. in God's anger, and forms itself further in the Serpent's ens to substance. Let it be what zeal it will, if it brings itself into a wrath to its own revenge it is formed in the ens of the Serpent, and is devilish.n7411 ¶297
59. And though the same were a prophet and an apostle, and yet would bring himself in the wrath to his own revenge, then this substance is formed from the anger of God in the Serpent's ens, and goes into the wrath of God;n7411 ¶298
and the anger of God is therein zealous, which oftentimes does so stir up and form itself in the holy children of God, that they must, against their purposed will, bring down the turba upon the house of the wicked, also upon his body and soul. As may be seen by Moses, upon Chorah, Dathan and Abiram, whom the earth swallowed up; so also by Elias in the fire, concerning the two captains over fifties, whom the fire devoured; also by Elisha, and many other prophets.n7411 ¶299
60. And there are many remarkable examples to be found concerning this in the holy histories, how, oftentimes, the children of God have been forced to carry the sword of the turba in them. A great example whereof we see in Samson, and also in Joshua, with his wars, and likewise in Abraham; how the zeal of God did enkindle itself in them, that they, in their spirit of zeal, have oftentimes awakened the turba magna in the anger of God, and raised great rebukes, judgements and plagues upon whole countries; as Moses in Egypt did, with the plagues upon the Egyptians.n7411 ¶300
61. But we must here distinguish. If the zeal of God should awaken itself in a holy man without his purposed will, and give him the sword of God's anger, such a one differs much from those who in their own thoughts contrive and plot in the wrath, and introduce the conceived or purposed will into the Serpent's ens, and make it to substance; for that is sin, yea, though the most holy man should do it.n7411 ¶301
62. Therefore, in the new birth, Christ so emphatically and punctually teaches us love, humility and meekness; and would that a Christian should not at all revenge, also not be angry; for he says, that whosoever is angry with his brother is guilty of the judgement. For the anger is a conception in the Serpent's ens, which must be cut off by the judgement of God from the good being. And whosoever shall say unto his brother, Raca, shall he in danger of the council. For the desire of Raca [Or revenge] arises in the centre of the dark fiery wheel of the eternal nature; therefore in the fire- soul there is a form of the fire-word, [in manner] of a wheel, like a madness; and the soul's fiery-form stands in the Raca, as a mad furious wheel, which confounds the essence in the body, and destroys or shatters in pieces the understanding; for every Raca desires to destroy God's image. Thus the soul hangs on the wheel of the eternal nature, viz. on the centre of the horrible anxious birth; as is before mentioned concerning the centre of the birth of nature.n7411 ¶302
63. Moreover, Christ says, Whosoever says to his brother, you fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. This is thus wrought: when the conceived will has formed itself in the furious wrath of God's anger, and introduced it into the Serpent's ens, then it stands in the furious wheel, as mad;n7411 ¶303
and if it does now purposely go on, and so form the word, and casts or speaks it forth against its brother, and enkindles in him also a hateful enmity in the Serpent's ens, the same burns in his expressed word in the fire of God's anger, and he is guilty of it, for he has enkindled it in his Raca.n7411 ¶304
64. Therefore said Christ, if you will offer your gift, go first and be reconciled to your offended brother or neighbour, for otherwise he brings his wrath into your offering, and withholds you in your desire towards God, that you canst not reach the holy ens, which else washes away the turba in your enkindled vanity.n7411 ¶305
65. For the word fool is, in itself, in the essence, nothing else but an enkindled wrathful fiery wheel, an outrageous madness; and he that so calls his neighbour without a cause, he has brought forth a word in the fire-wheel, and in the wrath of God, and is guilty of it; for the forth-produced word is arisen out of the ens of the soul and body.n7411 ¶306
66. Every word, when it is formed, doth first awaken its own ens, whence it takes its original; then it leads itself forth through the council of the five senses against its brother. Now whosoever uses such a wrathful devouring fire-word against his brother, he sows into the anger of God, and is in danger to reap the fruit which he has so sown, when it springs up and grows.n7411 ¶307
67. Therefore take heed, and beware, 0 man, what you thinkest, speakest, or desirest to do. Look well always in what zeal you stand, whether it be divine, or only of your own poisonful nature ! you father, you mother, you brother, and you sister, which proceed and come from one blood, from one ens, and mutually assimulate each with other, as a tree in its branches: think and consider what kind of sound [or tune] you introduce into the vital ens of your fellow-twigs and branches, whether it be God's loveword, or his word of anger! If ye do not destroy the introduced evil again with love, and introduce again the love-ens into the anger [to overcome and reconcile it], then the substance must come into the judgement of God, and be separated in the fire of God, like as the devil is severed from the good ens; and so shall you [be], O wicked man, with your wicked formed word [which you have conceived] out of the ens of God's anger.n7411 ¶308
68. And therefore God has introduced his holy Word out of his deepest love again into the human ens, seeing the same was introduced into Adam and Eve in the anger, that man might conceive [or form his will and doings] again in the introduced love of God in Christ Jesus, and in him destroy the wrathful anger. And therefore Christ teaches us that he is the Gate which leads us into God, that he is the Way and the Light, whereupon we may again enter into God, and in him regenerate [or quicken again to life] the holy ens.n7411 ¶309
69. And therefore Christ forbids us to be angry, or to conceive our will and word in revenge; but if anyone did curse us, we ought to bless him; and if any did strike us, him we should not resist; lest our turba should be stirred up in the new-born holy ens of Christ, and introduce the Serpent's craft, iniquity, and ens, thereinto.n7411 ¶310
70. But we should in love be as children, who understand nothing of the Serpent's craft. Therefore we declare, in divine knowledge, as a dear and precious truth, that all contention, covetousness, envy, anger, war, false desire, or whatsoever may be of the like name [and nature] does take its original out of the centre of the revenge of the wrath of God, out of the dark world, and is brought in the Serpent's ens to a substance, wherein the false Serpent's ens will behold and contemplate itself in pride.n7411 ¶311
71. Whatsoever does strive and contend in this world about selfhood, selfish interest, temporal honour, its own profit for its own advancement, the same is bred and born of the Serpent's ens; be it in either rich or poor, in superior or inferior, no order, rank or condition whatsoever excepted. All men who would be called Christians, or children of divine love, they must be born again in their first ens (which disappeared and corrupted in Adam) out of the divine love in the holy and heavenly ens, or else none of them can be a child of the love of God. All the greediness and covetousness, of all places and politic powers, under what name or title soever, does wholly proceed from the Serpent's ens.n7411 ¶312
72. 1 speak not of the offices, but of the falsehood of the officers. The office in its place and station is God's ordinance, if it be carried on in holy desire, and arises out of a divine root, for good; if not, but that it rises only out of a root for selfhood and pride, then it is from the Serpent's craft, and goes into destruction.n7411 ¶313
73. All war, however blanched over and under what pretence soever, takes its original out of God's anger; and he that begins it, does it from a self-full desire to selfish interest, from the Serpent's ens: unless that war arises from the command and injunction of God, that a nation has brought forth (itself) in his wrath, that he would his anger should devour it, and ordain a holier in the room, as was brought to pass by Israel among the Gentiles, otherwise it is wholly born in the self-full turba in selfhood. It does not belong to any true Christian born of Christ to raise the sword of the turba, unless the zealous spirit of God does stir it up in him, who of ten will rebuke sin.n7411 ¶314
Whatsoever exalts itself in the wrath about its own honour and pride, and brings itself to revenge [or bloodshed] is from the devil, be it either by nobles or ignobles, none excepted; before God they be all alike.n7411 ¶315
74. Earthly dominion and government has its original from the fall, in the Serpent's craft; seeing man departed from the love-will, from the obedience of God, therefore he must have a judge to rebuke the false desire in its substance, and destroy the false substance. Therefore magistracy and superiority is ordained of God for a defence of the righteous substance and will, and not for its selfish interest and its own perverse will, to break down and destroy governments at its pleasure, and to oppress the poor and impotent. Whatsoever does that, is arisen from the Serpent's ens, let it glister and colour over itself with what hypocrisy it will; and though it were clothed with gold and pearls, yea, even with the sun, it is bred and born out of the Serpent's ens, and has the Serpent's ens in its government, and tends into destruction, unless it be born anew [in the ens of Christ] .n7411 ¶316
75. Whatsoever is not born out of the ens of love, and bears forth a will of righteousness and truth, to work something that is good upon the earth for the service and profit of his neighbour, the same is idolatrous; for in Adam we all are one tree; we are all sprung from one only root.n7411 ¶317
76. And God has begotten us in his love, and brought us into Paradise. But the Serpent's craft has set us at variance, so that we are departed out of Paradise, and come into its [the Serpent's] villainous subtle craft, into selfishness; whence we must again depart, and enter into a child's coat.n7411 ¶318
77. We have nothing in this world for our own propriety but a shirt, whereby we cover our shame before the angels of God, that our abomination may not appear naked; and that is our own, and nothing else; the other is all common: Whosoever has two coats, and sees that his brother has none, the other coat is his brother's, as Christ teaches us.n7411 ¶319
78. For we come naked into this world, and carry away scarce our shirt with us, which is the covering of our shame; the rest we possess either by necessity of office, or else out of covetousness, out of the Serpent's false desire. Every man should seek the profit and preservation of his neighbour, how he might serve and be helpful to him; as one branch of a tree gives its power, essence and virtue to the other, and they grow and bear fruit in one desire. Even so we are all one treen7411 ¶320
79. But we are in Adam withered in the Serpent's ens, as to the love-will; and we must all be new-born in Christ's love-ens and will; without that, none is a child of the love of God; and though there may be something of the divine love in many a one, yet it is wholly covered with the Serpent's ens; which devilish ens does continually spring forth above the love, and bears fruit.n7411 ¶321
80. There is not any who does good in selfhood and own will, unless that he forsake in the own (appropriating) will all whatsoever he has, except the infant's shirt; that he must keep for his own and give it to none, for it is the covering of his shame. The other is all common, and he is only a servant and steward of the same, a guardian and distributor to every one in his place.n7411 ¶322
81. Whosoever suffers the poor and miserable to be in want and distress under his charge, and gathers into his mind temporal goods for his own property, he is no Christian, but a child of the Serpent; for he suffers his under branches to wither, and keeps away his sap and power from them, and will not work forth fruits by his fellowbranches.n7411 ¶323
82. We do not hereby mean the wicked idle crew which will only suck, and not work and bring forth fruit themselves in the tree, that they should be pampered to exercise pleasure and vanity; but we speak of the twigs which stand in the tree, and co-operate, and would fain grow and bear fruit, from whom the great branches of this world do withdraw the sap, and hold it in themselves, that they, as lean overdript twigs, do wither, by and under their charge. Such are the rich potentates and nobles; with them the spirit of zeal does here speak; so far as they do keep and hold their sap within themselves, and suffer their small branches to dry up and wither, and wholly withdraw the sap from them. They are branches on the tree of the Serpent, which is grown up in the curse of God's anger, and is reserved for the fire of God's anger; says the Spirit of Wonders.n7411 ¶324
The Twenty-Third Chaptern7411 ¶325
How God re-called Adam and his Eve when they were entered into Sin and Vanity, and awakened in the Serpent's Ens; and laid upon them the Order of this toilsome laborious world, and ordained the Serpent-Bruiser for a Help (or Saviour) to themn7411 ¶326
1. Now when Adam and Eve had eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and were become monstrous by the Serpent, Moses writes of it thus: Their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons (Gen. iii. 7).n7411 ¶327
Here the soul did even now know the monstrous image, and was ashamed of it; that such a gross beast, with gross flesh and hard bones, should awaken [or show itself] with a bestial worm's carcass of vanity in their tender delicate body;n7411 ¶328
and they would have covered the same from the eyes of God, and for shame crept behind the trees. So very ashamed were they of the souldeformity of the beast; for the bestial ens had swallowed up the heavenly, and got the upper hand, which before they had not known; now they could not tell for shame what they should do.n7411 ¶329
2. The Serpent's craft would not here cover the shame, but did lay it only more open, and accused them, as revolting, faithless rebels; for God's anger did awake in them, and arraigned them now before the severe judgement, to devour them into itself; as into the dark world, as happened to Lucifer.n7411 ¶330
3. And this is the place [state, condition] whereby the earth trembled in the death of Christ, and the rocks clove in sunder: Here God's anger shut up in death the holy ens of the heavenly humanity; which Christ, when he destroyed death on the Cross, did again open; at which the wrath, in the curse of the earth and rocks, shook and trembled.n7411 ¶331
4. And here was the sore combat before God's anger, in which combat Christ, in the Garden (when he prayed, and was to overcome this anger), did sweat drops of blood, when he said, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; but if it be not possible, but that I must drink it, your will be done.n7411 ¶332
5. Christ, on the Cross, must drink down this wrathful anger, which was awakened in Adam's essence, into his holy heavenly ens, and change it with great love into divine joy; of which the drink of gall and vinegar, being a mixed draught which the Jews gave him, was a type, signifying what was done inwardly in the humanity of Christ.n7411 ¶333
6. For the outward image of man should also be redeemed from the anger and death, and again arise out of the earth. Therefore Christ's outward humanity from the kingdom of this world must also drink of this cup, which God the Father had filled to Adam in his anger. The same, Christ must drink of ; and change the anger into love. Therefore said Christ, Is is possible, then let it pass from me: but it was not possible to overcome the anger, unless the sweet name Jesus drink it into itself; and change it into joy: Then said Christ, Father! your will be done, and not the will of my humanity.n7411 ¶334
7. God's will should also have been fulfilled in Adam; but he exalted his own will by the Serpent's craft: now the humanity of Christ upon the Cross must give this own self-will unto the anger for to devour it. But the holy name Jesus brought it into the death of selfhood, that it must die in the wrathful death, and enter again through death in his resurrection into the true resignation, viz. into the divine harmony.n7411 ¶335
8. Adam, when he had awakened the anger in him, stood in Paradise in great shame and scorn before God and all holy angels; and the devil did mock and deride him, that this image of God, which should possess his royal throne, was become a monstrous beast. And into this scorn Christ must enter, and suffer himself to be reviled, mocked, spit upon, whipped, crowned with thorns, as a false king; for Adam was a king and hierarch, but become false and rebellious.n7411 ¶336
9. Here Christ stood in his stead, and was condemned to death; for Adam also should have been judged by God)s anger. Here Adam, that is, Christ in Adam's humanity, stood in his stead. Adam should have been rejected as a curse, even as a scorn before heaven andn7411 ¶337
And in sum, the whole process of Christ, from his Incarnation unto his Ascension, and sending of the Holy Ghost, is Adam's estate. What Adam had merited as a malefactor, Christ himself must take upon him in Adam's person, and bring again the life out of death.n7411 ¶338
10. Adam was made by the word of God, but he fell from God's love-word into his anger-word. Thus God, out of mere grace, did again awaken in Adam's wrathful image his love-word, in the deepest humility, love and mercy, and introduced the great love ens into the ens of the awakened anger, and in Christ changed the angry Adam into a holy one.n7411 ¶339
11. Moses describes it very clearly, but the veil lies before the bestial man, that he does not know him, for he says, And they heard the voice of the Lord God, which walked in the Garden when the day grew cool, and Adam and his wife hid themselves amongst the trees from the presence of the Lord God (Gen. iii. 8).n7411 ¶340
12. Moses says, they heard the voice of the Lord God, which walked in the Garden. What is now this voice which was [or stirred] in the Garden? for Adam's ears were dead to the divine hearing, and were awakened in the wrath; he could not in his own might hear any more God's holy voice, for he was dead as to the kingdom of heaven, as to the divine holiness; as God told him: in that day that you eat of this Tree, you shall die.n7411 ¶341
13. The voice was God's anger, which forced in to Adam's essence, when the day became cool; understand, the eternal day in Adam's essence was awakened in cold and heat; therefore now they heard the voice of God, the Lord, in his anger in their essence; for the turba was awakened: the tone or hearing of the dark world did sound [or ring its sad knell] .n7411 ¶342
14. But that which walked in the Garden, and re-called Adam, was another voice, which brake forth out of the anger, and walked [or moved] in the Garden, for the word der im Garten ging is the difference, or note of distinction, and signifies the voice JESUS, proceeding from JEHOVAH; the voice was TETRAGRAMMA. But that which walked in the Garden was TON, viz. the centre of the light world;n7411 ¶343
and the voice TETRAGRAMMA is the centre to the fireworld, viz. the First Principle, and the TON, the Second Principle. As fire and light are one, but they sever themselves in their coming forth to manifestation into a twofold source: the like also is to be considered concerning this.n7411 ¶344
15. The voice of the fire-world entered into the essence of Adam and Eve; the same they heard, therefore they were afraid, and crept among the trees: but the voice of the light- world is this, whereof Moses spoke, Der im Garten ging; the holy voice walked in the Garden of Paradise, for the word Der denotes the Person of Christ, who walked in the spirit, in the Garden, and went forth from the fire's centre, who took possession of Paradise, and would invest Adam again with it.n7411 ¶345
16. Therefore says Moses now: and the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? (Gen. ill. 9). Wherefore said he not, Adam and Eve where are ye? No, he called to Adam, viz. to the first image which he created in Paradise, and not unto the man and woman;n7411 ¶346
for he that called was he which walked in the Garden, viz. the Word of the light-world, the voice of the Second Principle, which called back again in [and from] the enkindled anger, and espoused itself again unto the disappeared heavenly ens, that it would arise and stir up itself again therein, in the name JESUS, viz. in the deepest love of the Deity, and unite and manifest itself; in the fullness of time, in the disappeared ens, with the introducement of the holy divine ens of the heavenly world's essence thereinto, and open Paradise again; and in the meantime bruise the head of the Serpent's ens; this Serpent-Bruiser said to Adam, Where art thou?n7411 ¶347
17. Now says reason, He saw him well enough, wherefore said he then, Where art thou? He did indeed see Adam, but Adam did not see him; for his eyes were departed from Adonai, from the divine world, into time, viz. into the outward world, into the Serpent's ens, [both] evil and good, into the death and corruptibility. Out of these monstrous eyes Adam saw in the property of the fire's tincture;n7411 ¶348
but the property of the light's tincture, which he had wretchedly lost, said upon him, Where art thou, Adam? Which is as much as if he had said, Seek me, and see me again: I am come to give myself again unto you. And Adam said, I heard your voice in the Garden, and was afraid, for I am naked(Gen.iii. 10).n7411 ¶349
18. This calling him was nothing else but the voice or sound of the holy word introducing itself again into the vital light, else Adam could not have heard this voice: therefore he said, I am naked, and afraid.n7411 ¶350
19. Of what was he afraid? He felt in him the world of God's anger, and feared that it would wholly enkindle itself and devour him, as happened to Lucifer. Therefore he trembled at the call of the holy voice, as the anger trembleth at the love, as may be seen on the Cross of Christ, for even here was the fear and dread of the Serpent; for it knew the voice which called into Adam's ens, and feared before the face of God; for it knew [or perceived] the falsehood which was in it, which it would hide.n7411 ¶351
20. And God said, Who told you that you art naked? (Gen. iii. 11). That is, the Serpent's ens has told you, that you shouldest imagine after the bestial property, and awaken the same.n7411 ¶352
21. And we see here very clearly, that Adam knew nothing of this naked bestial property in his innocency; but if it had been manifest in him, surely he had then known it. But now God says to him, Who has told you it; have you eaten of the tree whereof I commanded you that you should not eat? Did not I charge and command you that you should not awaken the property of nakedness in you? Wherefore have you by lust brought yourself into the bestial property? Did not I create you in the angelical property? Wherefore are you then become a beast in my power? Have not I made you in and through my word? Why has your own free will changed my word?n7411 ¶353
22. And he said, The woman which you did join with me, gave me, and I did eat of the tree. And God said to the woman, wherefore have you done this? And she said, the Serpent beguiled me, and I did eat (Gen. iii. 12, 13). Herein it is plainly and clearly laid open, that the devil, in the ens of the Serpent, did deceive man, as it is before mentioned; and that they both, Adam and his wife, were made monstrous by the Serpent.n7411 ¶354
23. For God said to the Serpent (by whose property the devil had made himself a seat and habitation in man's image): Because you have done this, be you accursed above all cattle, and above all the beasts of the field; upon your belly shall you go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life (Gen. iii. 14).n7411 ¶355
24. But here the veil lies before the face of Moses, who passes by the Serpent, and does not describe what it was. But seeing how God said unto it, that it should go upon the belly, and eat earth, and no law was given to it in the beginning, thereupon we are here well able to find what it was; seeing it was the most subtle beast among all the beasts, and slew Eve her virgin-like chastity, that she lusted after the bestial copulation. Thereupon we understand in the Serpent's property the desire of [carnal] brutal copulation, and all unchastity, wanton uncleanness, and bestial whoredom of man.n7411 ¶356
25. for it, viz. the Serpent in its inward limus whereinto the devil introduced his desire, was [Or had been ] a virgin-like ens; understand, in the good part of the heavenly ens, which was taken in the Verbum Fiat, and brought into a creatural image according to each property; as also the devil's ens, before his creature [ship], was a virgin-like ens of angelical property.n7411 ¶357
26. This Serpent's ens was modelised and engrafted in Adam and Eve, for the desire of Eve took hold of this bestial property, and imprinted it into herself, as a blemish [or foul mark], into the right pure virginity, into the pregnant matrix. Therefore God cursed the image of the outward Serpent, and bid it go upon the belly, and eat earth; and herewith also the mark [or blemish] of the impressed monstrous Serpent [was enstamped] in man.n7411 ¶358
27. For as now the outward Serpent must go upon the belly and eat earth, which had brought its figure into the matrix in Eve's belly, so must now the belly of Eve eat of the cursed earth, and the matrix goes as a subtle Serpent upon its belly, and beguileth the limbus of the fire's tincture. Thus it longeth after its belly and Serpent-creeping, whereas it is only that this Serpent's matrix might exercise whoredom, and effect a bestial work. As Eve did deceive Adam, so that he did eat of the fruit, and as the outward Serpent was cursed, so also the Serpent's matrix of the bestial property in Eve [was accursed], from whence all her children are corrupted, and are all born of a monstrous matrix, which is a deflowered maid in the sight of God; for Adam had already corrupted it when as he stood in both tinctures; but when Eve was separated from Adam it came with her into act.n7411 ¶359
28. And God said, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; it shall bruise your head, and you shall sting it on the heel (Gen. iii. 15). Now the ground does lie herein; for God did not mean hereby the outward bestial serpent without man, which hides itself in holes and crannies of the rocks, and inhabites in the rude solitary places [of the earth], but the monstrous bestial Serpent in man, which was figured in the woman's matrix.n7411 ¶360
29. For when God called Adam when he hid himself among the trees, and was ashamed and feared, then the voice of the holy Word entered again into the vital light. And here, when God said, I will put enmity, the seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpent's head, then the holy voice of God went forth out of JEHOVAH, (which would once more move itself in time, and manifest JESUS) in the woman's matrix, in the disappeared heavenly ens, and incorporated itself anew with the holy Word [therein], as into an aim [bound] of an eternal covenant.n7411 ¶361
30. And this word, which did promise, inhest and incorporate itself into the woman's seed, was that same word which did move itself in Mary's seed, and opened the name JESUS out of the centre of the deepest love in the word, and quickened the disappeared heavenly ens with the introducing of the holy living ens into the disappeared ens of Mary.n7411 ¶362
31. Understand, the heavenly chaste virginity was again revived in the name of JESUS in the seed of Mary in the motion of the incorporated Word; and this incorporated [or engrafted or in- spoken] Word stood in Eve her seed in the matrix as an aim of a certain and was all along propagated in Eve's seed, from man to man in the heavenly part, as a sound or incentive of the divine holy light's-fire, wherein the name JESUS was all along propagated in an aim and Covenant, as a glimmering incentive, until the time of the awakening [or manifestation] of it in Mary, where the Covenant was fulfilled, and the doors of the shut chamber were again opened. And this is that holy fire out of which the name JESUS was manifest, which holy fire did burn in the Jewish offerings, which appeased [or atoned] the anger of God, and bruised the head of the monstrous Serpent in man, viz. the monstrous fire-spirit, and will.n7411 ¶363
32. The bruising of the head is nothing else but to destroy the abomination of the Serpent, to take away its power by a right desire of faith; and by such a strong importunate imagination of faith on the promised Word, to take the same Word and introduce it into the Serpent's ens, and therewith destroy and ruin the devil's theft-fort; and thereby kill the matrix of the whorish desire, and introduce the matrix with its desire into the virgin-like ens, into the aim of then7411 ¶364
33. In which Covenant the woman and the man [female and male property] shall and must die; and the chaste virgin must be born out of the death in the Word of the Covenant, with both tinctures of peculiar love; and then the Serpent, in its desire in the anger of God, will sting on the heel the virgin-child of the new-birth in the faith.n7411 ¶365
34. For all this lifetime the virgin-like child is fast bound by the heel with a strong chain unto the monstrous image; and is not able to get quite rid of the Serpent's chain all this lifetime. This chain is the brutal bestial monstrous man, in whom lieth the monster of the whore and Serpent; a figure whereofwe have in the Revelation of John, where the woman stands, with the crown and twelve stars, upon the moon.n7411 ¶366
35. The moon signifies the bestial man, and the woman signifies the virgin-like matrix in the aim of the Covenant, out of which the virgin-child is born.n7411 ¶367
36. When as Adam was man and woman, and yet none of them both, the virginity according to the light's tincture in the holy ens was poisoned and infected in him by false desire, for the fiery property of the soul carried [or directed] its lust into the earthliness; and out of that virginity the woman, by the adjoining of all the three Principles, was made; and the woman made herself monstrous by the Serpent, and corrupted the virgin-like matrix, and by her lust did introduce a bestial monstrous serpentine [matrix] thereinto, infected with the devil's will and desire.n7411 ¶368
37. Now this holy virgin-like matrix in Eve was captivated by the monstrous property, and the image of the heavenly ens did disappear in her. And in this heavenly ens, (understand, in the right virgin-like seed of chastity, sanctity and purity, which was captived in Eve by the monstrous Serpent and bestial whore's-desire), the Word of God did inhest [infuse] itself with the dear, precious and holy name JESUS; that it would again introduce [a] living heavenly ens into this captived disappeared ens, and bruise the head of the Serpent's ens, viz. the whore's monster, and mortify its desire, and cast away the whore's image [or bastard] and overpower and allay the enkindled anger of God in this virgin-like matrix with the deepest love of God, and wholly kill and null the monster [of the Serpent in flesh and blood].n7411 ¶369
And this is that which God said, the seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpent's head.n7411 ¶370
38. Understand it aright: The virgin-like seed of Eve in the Word of God should do it in the name and sweet power of JESUS : the seed included in the Covenant of God, whereout the virgin-child is born as the dew out of the morning, that (I say) should and must do it.n7411 ¶371
39. For the child which is from the blood of the man and woman shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven; but that which is [born] of the virgin-like ens, in the aim of the Covenant, out of the promised Word of God. The child of the man and woman is a monstrum, and must die, and putrify and rot in the earth; but the virgin-like ens which lies hidden in this monstrum is the true seed, of which the children of Christ are born; yea, even in this life-time, for the life of this child is the true faith and great divine desire.n7411 ¶372
40. This virgin-like child does live in Christ's children in the spirit and flesh of Christ, in a spiritual body, outwardly covered with the monstrum in the child of the whore and Serpent; there is no man which does not outwardly carry on him the Serpent's child.n7411 ¶373
41. But the virgin's child, born of the divine virgin-like ens of JESUS, does not live in all: there is indeed in many a one a glimmering incentive thereunto, viz. a weak faith and divine desire; but the true, holy and precious life of the virginity is not born: it stands captivated in the judgement of God.n7411 ¶374
42. Yet well for those who have but an incentive in them; to those we give this direction: that their soul's desire should in the spirit of Christ dive itself into the divine incentive; and with the fire-desire enkindle that incentive, and also forsake and hate the Serpent's monster and bastard, and introduce their great hunger and thirst into the virgin-like ens, into the Word of God's Covenant, and into the fulfilling of the Covenant, viz. into the humanity of Christ; and ever mortify and trample under foot the whore's monster in the will of the desire, as a venomous stinging evil Serpent, a false bastard, that cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and is only a hinderance to the virgin's child.n7411 ¶375
43. For the Word of the Promise in the Covenant would not incorporate itself into the man's tincture, viz. in the soul's fire-ens, but into the woman's, viz. into the light's tincture, into the virginlike centre, which should have brought forth magically in Adam; even into the heavenly matrix of the holy pregnatress; in which light's tincture the fiery soul's ens was weaker than in the man's fire-ens.n7411 ¶376
44. In this light's ens God would arouse the fire-ens, viz. the true soul, and as it were beget it anew, as may be seen in the person of Christ according to the humanity, who in this virgin-like ens did assume a manly fire-soul from the woman's property, from the female virgin-like seed, wholly contrary to nature's proper and peculiar ability, for the image of God is a man-like virgin, neither woman norn7411 ¶377
45. And if a man will rightly consider both properties according to the divine property, then let him ascribe the male to God the Father, viz. to the first Principle, where God's Word does manifest itself with the fire- world, which is the first centre of the creature; and the female let him ascribe to God the Son, viz. to the second Principle, where the divine eternal Word does manifest itself in the light of love, and opens another centre in the love-desire, and comes into the fire's centre; in manner as the fire produces a light; and the light [is] a great meekness of an oily, watery and aery property, which property the fire draws in again, whence it receives its shining lustre, and also its life to burn, else it would smother and suffocate.n7411 ¶378
46. And as these three, viz. the fire, light and air, have one only original, yet they give a very evident distinction in their property. The like also we are here to mind: into this property in the life of man's soul the most sweet name JESUS has incorporated itself in the Word of Promise, as into the likeness which stood in the light's centre of the heavenly matrix, viz. in the right virgin-like ens, inspired out of the light's property into Adam; and has awaked [itself] in the same limus, as a true centre of the second Principle, viz. of the angelical world, a real temple of the spirit of God;n7411 ¶379
an open, and wide [or stirring] gate of the divine wisdom, in the highest beauty, excellency and love, wherein the holy angelical life consists, and bears therein the name of the great holy God, viz. the holy Word of the Deity.n7411 ¶380
47. Into this property the Word of God did betroth and espouse itself in the Covenant; for it was opened out of the holy Word in Adam. God would not forsake his holy manifested Word, which, with the creating of Adam, had introduced itself into an ens, which the devil obscured and darkened in in the Serpent's ens from the but would again open the same, and thereby bruise the head of the Serpent's ens, and beget the human soul out of this divine ens, to a manlike virgin, viz. to an angel, servant and child of God.n7411 ¶381
48. We do not mean that this holy ens did receive the Serpent's desire into itself when Adam and Eve became monstrous. No, but it disappeared; yet the soul, according to the first Principle, took it into the fire's property, viz. into the Fiat, and introduced the Serpent's ens, with the desire of the Fiat, into the earthly limus, whereupon out of the one only element four elements were manifest in man.n7411 ¶382
49. Therefore the virgin-like ens of the one only element must now bruise the head of the introduced Serpent's ens in the four elements; and the man of the four elements must die and putrify, and the first [man] must return at the last day clothed with the virginlike ens in the one only element wherein all things lie in equal weight [or perfect harmony] .n7411 ¶383
50. for this virgin-like ens, new-born in the spirit of Christ, dies not any more, although the four-elements man, viz. the image of this world, dies; but it lives in God's kingdom, and shall in the resurrection of the dead embrace and put on the limus of the earth, viz. the third Principle, as a garment of the wonder-deeds of God. But the Serpent's ens remains in the earth, and shall be burnt away at the last day through the fire, from the pure limus of the earth, where the dark world shall devour it with all its works.n7411 ¶384
51. Thus we herein understand very clearly, how God out of great love has promised the Serpent-Bruiser to the fallen man, and espoused and betrothed it unto the virgin-like and disappeared centre, and given in itself therewith for a help and companion. For when they were fallen from God, and had made themselves monstrous, then the image out of the limus of the earth became wholly brutal, and lived in opposition, in distemper, in sickness, and also in heat and cold, as all other beasts.n7411 ¶385
52. Now therefore God told them what their labour, work and employment should be in this world, viz. that they should bring forth children in sorrow, with painful smart, in trouble and distress, and eat the herb of the field, and now clothe their bestial image in turmoil and cumbring care, in toil and labour, until the four-elements man in the bestial Serpent's image should again be broken and dissolved, and return unto the earth, from whence it was taken and extracted as a limus.n7411 ¶386
The Twenty-Fourth Chaptern7411 ¶387
Of the Cause and Rise of the Curse of the Earth, and of the Body of Sicknessn7411 ¶388
1. GOD'S cursing of the ground for man's sins' sake, that it should bring forth thorns and thistles, and commanding man not, till after sin was committed, to eat of the herb of the field, and in the sweat of his face to eat his bread, does plainly and sufficiently show us that this had not been in Paradise. The ground should not have borne thorns and thistles and other evil herbs, which are poisonful; but in the curse all these properties became manifest; for as the body was, after the fall, so likewise its food: the halfserpentine man must now eat such food as his desire required [or coveted] .n7411 ¶389
2. The curse is nothing else but the holy element's hiding of itself viz. the holy ens, which budded forth through the earth and bore fruit, and held the property of the four elements as 'twere captive in itself [did withdraw or closely conceal itself]. The heaven in the earth hid itself from the earth; the holy tincture, from the awakened vanity, viz. the heavenly part, which was from the heavenly ens [did keep itself secret] from the part in the curse, viz. in the ens of the dark world.n7411 ¶390
3. Thus the heavenly part was a mystery unto man, and so remained in the curse between time and eternity, half dead as to the heavenly part, yet anew embraced with the promise in the aim of the Covenant; and as to the earthly [part] strongly bound to the band of the stars and four elements, infected with the distemper of the Serpent and the devil; very hard tied with three strong chains, from which he cannot get free till the total dissolution of his earthly body; for the curse of the earth and the Serpent forced also into the earthly man, viz. into the limus of the earth.n7411 ¶391
4. For God's said, you are earth, and unto earth you shall return; for when the desire of the limus of the extract of the earth (viz. of the outward man) did enter again into the earth, and imagine after the earthly fruit, then the devil infected his desire by the property of the Serpent; and in each desire is the Fiat, which does impress and make the desire essential [into form]. Thus the earthly hunger became at this instant wholly earthly; therefore God said now unto him: you must turn again to earth, from whence you were taken; for the heavenly disappeared in the earthly, as the gold is disappeared in lead.n7411 ¶392
5. Thus an earthly body is now sown into the earth, and the earth receives it as its own property. But the ens which is from the eternity (which cannot be destroyed) lies in this earthly-sown body. Nothing is broken or dissolved but the gross beast, viz. the being [or substance] of time. As a fixed metal is not destroyed [or corrupted] in the earth, even so also the fixed part of the human body;n7411 ¶393
and as the artist brings forth an excellent gold out of the earth, so likewise the human gold lies buried in the earth, and waits only for the artist to raise it up.n7411 ¶394
6. And as there is a various and manifold diversity of metalline property in the earth, so likewise of the ens of human property. Therefore all things shall be proved through the fire. What kind of property everyone has in this time assumed to himself and impressed on his body (viz. with the desire of the Fiat), that shall be tried in the fire, whether or no he has impressed a fixed steadfast property from the divine ens into himself or a hellish bestial one. All this shall be tried and proved in the fire of God; and as the ens is, in each body, such a fire also shall be enkindled in the same ens.n7411 ¶395
7. And as quicksilver does evaporate in the fire, even so shall all the wicked devilish serpentine works, which have been impressed out [brought forth] of the dark world and devil's desire.n7411 ¶396
8. Now if a man has in this lifetime impressed into himself [a] divine ens, by earnest faith and divine desire, (understand, introduced [this] by the human soul into the mortal part of the limus of the earth), then it lies shut up in the mortal part, yet as a glimmering incentive which longs and labours to burn and shine, or as the precious gold lies shut up in a gross drossy ore, or in lead, and waits only for the artist to come and release it, even so likewise shall be the delivery and releasement of man's body out of the earth.n7411 ¶397
9. Now also we do herein understand the body of sickness, and also the physician [or curer thereof] ; for when the heavenly ens did disappear and was captivated with the earthly, as the gold in the lead, then the outward astrum awakened in the body. And now as the outward astrum does mutually destroy and ruin one another's ens, and change it into another ens, according to the greatest and most predominant power; so likewise the human mind (which is a magical astrum) is hereby governed and ruled, and the body also; and is thereby brought into strange desire and lust; whereby man does weaken, plague and perplex himself; and one introduced ens does martyr, weaken and annoy another, both through meat, and thoughts, or cumbring molesting care.n7411 ¶398
10. As we plainly see that man for the most part does rack and plague himself in the astral mind with the desire about that which cannot be his own, which stands not open in his astrum;n7411 ¶399
and his astrum cannot apprehend, take, or receive it. About this the false introduced desire from the strange astrum does plague, perplex and spend itself day and night, whence the great covetousness does arise, that man does desire and introduce that into his astrum which is a hurtful poison and plague unto him; and yet with such [infoisted] strange matter cannot make any fixed steadfast [thing or being] in him which may subsist in eternity.n7411 ¶400
11. All whatsoever the own peculiar astrum (viz. the life's right astrum) does impress [or foist] into itselffrom [or of ] a strange astrum, is false, and an adverse will; whence enmity (viz. the great envy in nature) does arise, that the human mind wills to domineer over the strange ens; and if he cannot get it, yet that strange in-foisted, introduced ens burns in him in a spiritual manner, as a poisonful hungry fire of envy, that doth not freely beteem [ Or vouchsafe]n7411 ¶401
that to any, that it wills to possess itself.n7411 ¶402
12. And though it comes about that it may, through the Serpent's craft, draw it to itself or possess it, yet it has no fundamental seat [or true root] in its right life's astrum; for it is not capable of it. But the desire does advance and set it up as a king, and vaunt itself therewith as an absolute peculiar god, which has taken upon itself might over others, and sets itselfupon strange authority and domination. Whence the pride of riches and self-assumed honours and domination does arise;n7411 ¶403
and yet in its ground and original it has taken its rise from the devil (through the Serpent's ens), who also departed with the free will from his own peculiar ens into strange desire. Whereby he has introduced and awakened in himself (by reason of his strange in-foisted ens) the hellish torment, pain and sickness, so that his life's astrum is wholly departed from its mutual accord and harmony, and entered into an enchanting sorcering property: and so likewise it goes with the fallenn7411 ¶404
13. But now man has his cure, and the devil has not; for when the divine providence knew that he would not stand, he caused all manner of medicine [for hunger and health] to grow out of the earth, to resist and withstand the strange introduced property, both from the astrum and elements. And for the cure of the mind God has given his Holy Word; that the mind should immerse itself into the Word, and through the power of the Word continually cast away the introduced strange abomination.n7411 ¶405
14. And if it does not this, but continues in the strange introduced ens (which the devil continually introduces through the Serpent's image), then the strange ens becomes substantial, and surrounds the hidden ens of the heavenly world's being or substance; and even then that ens which is from and of the divine property remains disappeared in death and cannot attain the place of God. And hence comes the eternal death;n7411 ¶406
as is to be seen in Lucifer, in whom also his divine ens is included or shut up into the Nothing, viz. into the greatest hiddenness [or privation], so that he, in his magical astrum in the creatural property, cannot reach or obtain the place of God.n7411 ¶407
15. Therefore it is very necessary for man wholly to sink and dive himself into the promised incorporated Word of God; and continually and fully reject and cast away the strange introduced ens, which the devil insinuates into his mind (whereby he desires strange things); and only take for his corporal necessity and livelihood that which he may obtain with good truth and real upright honesty which befalls him in his calling [business, affairs];n7411 ¶408
the same his right life's astrum does bring unto him, and he is capable of it; and it creates him no vexation, trouble, discontent and pain, if he does not let in the Serpent's covetousness, pride, envy and anger thereinto.n7411 ¶409
16. And it is the greatest folly that man does eagerly and tearingly strive and hale for strange things [heterogene, and hurtful to his soul], and bring that into his desire which does only discontent and disturb him, and at last cast him quite from God; which does shut up his heavenly ens in body and soul. What profit is that unto him, which he sees without him, and does exalt himself in an outside lustre [as in a specious shadow and resemblance of a looking-glass], and yet is not capable of the same?n7411 ¶410
And if he does get to be capable of it he turns it to his temporal and eternal vexation and disquietness.n7411 ¶411
17. God has created man naked, and given him nothing in this world that he can or may call his own, saying this or that is mine. Indeed all is his, but it is common; for God created only one man: to that one only man he gave all whatsoever is in this world. Now all men are proceeded out of this only man, he is the stem or body, the other are all his branches, and do receive power from their stem, and bring forth fruit out of one root, and each twig enjoys the tree's ens, also they do all alike enjoy the four elements and the astrum [stars, planets] alike.n7411 ¶412
18. What folly [and madness] is it then, that the twig wills to be an own [selfish] tree; and grows up of itselfas a strange plant, as if its fellow-twig did not stand also in its stem. It is the Serpent's introduced ens which seduces and divides the branches on the life's tree of man from the only life of man, bringing each twig into a peculiar sundry hunger, desiring to be a tree by itself in self-full power and domination.n7411 ¶413
And therefore it desires the muchness [abundance] of this world for its own property, that it might greatly enlarge itself in the Serpent's ens, and be a great, thick, strong, fat, well-spread tree.n7411 ¶414
19. O you self-exalting vapourer, of what do you smell and savour? Even of the Serpent's wantonness, lust, concupiscence and poison, and the temporal and eternal death. And this you are in your own self-tree, and not a whit better, and though you were a king, yet that which is under your jurisdiction is only for your office, and not your own.n7411 ¶415
20. If you will enter again into the life-tree, and be a twig on the only life of man, then you must utterly forsake in your mind and desire all whatsoever that is in this world; and become as a little child; and look only upon that which your own life's astrum doth cast upon you in your estate, calling and place; and therein you must work, and not say, It is mine alone ! Albeit you are a steward therein, yet you serve therein the root alone upon which you stand.n7411 ¶416
You bear fruit to the root in your labour, which you must let stand free, and therewith be diligent and careful in preserving your calling and place, to serve your brother, and help to increase his sap, that he may grow up with you, and bear fruit.n7411 ¶417
21. In all self-hood and own-hood [ Selfish interests, minehood, and thine-hood, meum and tuum] there is a false plant; one brother should be the sovereign cure and refreshment to another, and delight or content his mind with the insinuation of his love- will. There were enough and enough in this world, if covetousness drew it not into a selfish property, and would bear good will to his brother as to himself; and let his pride go, which is from the devil.n7411 ¶418
22. He runs, with great pride and belly-carking, only to the devil in the bottomless pit [Into the abyss]. He will be noble, and better than his brother. But whence will he have it? Did not God give but one life to man, and out of that one comes the life of all men?n7411 ¶419
23. But that he fancies to himself that he is more noble and genteel therein [than others] and vaunts therewith, that is an apostacy and fall from God and his Word, for in the Word of God was the only life of man, which the Word breathed into the created and this same one only life is from eternity, and never had any beginning. Wherefore does man then bring in a strange life thereinto, that does disquiet and disturb the only life? Now it must come to this pass: that he does either with his will and desire enter again into the only childlike life, and forsake all whatsoever he has introduced, or else remain for ever in disquietness in that, his in-foisted, essence or [life].n7411 ¶420
24. Now then, seeing I must forsake all whatsoever I have introduced into myself for property, and that the same is only my hurt [loss,damage], wherefore then do not I forsake this false desire, which brings death and hellish vexation and torment into me? Better it is to quash and destroy the desire, then afterward the substance with great anguish and sadness;n7411 ¶421
as it is a very difficult and painful combat when a man must come to destroy the substance in him, by an earnest conversion into the childlike life.n7411 ¶422
25. But if the free will does in the beginning break and quell the desire and lust, so that the lust does not become substantial, then the cure is already produced; and afterward there need not be such an earnest purpose and endeavour, as he must have who is to depart from his contrived abominations, and forsake and destroy that substance [or matter] which he has forged and made in his mind. And yet it must come so about, or else he cannot attain the gates of the eternal only life which God gave to man; and if he reaches it not, then he also reaches not the gates of God [Or enters not inton7411 ¶423
26. For the only eternal life must be introduced into the Nothing, without [or beyond] every creature and being; for it has its eternal original out of the Nothing, viz. out of the divine understanding, and it is in a disquiet source in the Something; unless that its Something be also bent and set with its desire into the Nothing; and then the Something is a joy to the life; that the life of the Nothing in itself may dwell and work in Something.n7411 ¶424
27. For God, in reference to the creature, is as a Nothing, but if the creature introduces its desire into him, viz. into the Nothing, then the creature is the Something of the Nothing, and the Nothing moves, wills and works in the Something of the creature, and the creature in the Nothing; and in this working no turba can arise, for it is its own love-play, a mutual loving [of] itself; and it stands at the end of nature with its life.n7411 ¶425
28. Thus we understand what inheritance Adam has left us, viz. the curse, and the vain desire; and we consider the outward man in its life as a monster of a true human life: unless that the precious noble mind be born again in the spirit of Christ, else the outward centre in the mind is a serpent.n7411 ¶426
29. And in this serpent the gross beast which is from the astrum and four elements does sit, and holds possession in the house of the mind. And according to its bestial property produces various desires, one desiring this, another that, and causes manifold figures in the minds of men. One makes in his mind a fixed substance,l another a [shattered] ruinable [matter], that which he makes to-day, that he breaks down to-morrow, and has an inconstant beast in the mind, falls sometimes upon this, sometimes upon that [and of ten changes his mind] .n7411 ¶427
30. But he that brings up a fixed beast, he holds it in him for his treasure, and vaunts therewith as if it were the virgin-child, and gathers up earthly treasures for his bestial pleasure, and yet before God he is only a fool with his beast, for he must leave it to the earth and the judgement of God.n7411 ¶428
31. But he in whom the virgin's child is born, he treads the beast in the mind under foot. He must indeed suffer it outwardly upon him, to creep and falter as a laden ass that must carry the earthly sack.n7411 ¶429
But he has enmity with it, as God said to Adam, I wil put enmity between you and the Serpent, and between the woman's seed and the seed of the Serpent, which shall bruise the Serpent's head, viz. the Serpent's beast. This monster of the beast in the earthly mind the true man does bruise the head or its desire and might.n7411 ¶430
32. Thus a godly man must have enmity in himself; and trample under foot the monster, viz. the Serpent's child, and continually kill it, for if this bestial Serpent's Seed were not [had not been] impressed and wholly incorporated in us, God would not have said, I will put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the Serpent. The enmity is within man, and not without man with the creeping Serpent; this Serpent's seed in man is the devil's riding horse, his stronghold and fort, where he is able to dwell in man.n7411 ¶431
33. And therefore because the devil was a prince of this world, and still is so, in the anger, it is his will and aim to possess the image of God, which God created in his stead, and to rule it under his jurisdiction, and bring it into his kingdom; and this the curse of God's anger has brought along with it, which now works mightily unto destruction.n7411 ¶432
34. And on the contrary the Serpent-Bruiser works unto eternal life, and the human mind stands in the midst of these in the free will; to which the free will does engraft [Inoculate, or incorporate] itself; therein the mind works.n7411 ¶433
It brings up a beast, and also an angel, or a beast and a devil; according to the outward world a beast, and according to the inward spiritual world an angel or a devil.n7411 ¶434
35. Here a grain of seed is sown, which stands in three Principles, and is fit or pregnant to bear a creature in and to all three; for the divine possibility from God's manifested Word in love and anger, viz. the Verbum Fiat lies therein. As the free will conceives itself so it begets (or generates) an ens; and in the ens the spirit arises which forms it a creature out of the ens, and the spirit signs itself in the body what it is: and so stands its figure.n7411 ¶435
The Twenty-Fifth Chaptern7411 ¶436
How God drove Adam out of Paradise, and laid the Cherub before the Gardenn7411 ¶437
1. WHEN God had cursed the Serpent, and the earth, then the beast-man was no longer profitable in Paradise, for he could not any more enjoy the fruits of Paradise; therefore God laid upon him the labour and toil of the world;n7411 ¶438
and drove him out of the Garden of Eden, and placed the Cherub with the fire- sword of judgement before it, that if the new born virgin-child of the seed of the woman would again return and enter into Paradise, this angel with the fire-sword should cut away the Serpent's beast from it, and not any more suffer it to come into Paradise. [ Understand the beast]n7411 ¶439
2. The angel with the fire- sword is the right destroying angel, who carries death and life in his sword; he has therein God's love and anger, and when man dies in this world, then he comes before the gates of Paradise, before this angel: and even there the poor soul must pass through this [garden] judgement.n7411 ¶440
3. Now if it be captivated in the anger of God, then it cannot pass through this judgement; but ifit be a virgin-child, born of the seed of the woman, then it can pass quite through this sword, and then the angel cuts off the beast begotten of the Serpent's ens.n7411 ¶441
And even then the soul is an angel of God, and serves him in his temple, in Paradise, and expects the Day of judgement, viz. the resurrection of the outward body. When this angel with the fiery sword shall sever the earth from the curse, then the right human body returns again, for it must also pass through this sword, and the sword will cut of fits beast, that he may be only a man, and no more a beast.n7411 ¶442
4. The speech of Moses concerning this Mystery is wholly hidden to the earthly man; for Moses speaks of an angel and a sword; and albeit the outward figure was even just so (for so was Adam driven out) yet it has far another ABC internally. The natural man without God's light understands nothing thereof.n7411 ¶443
5. This sword is in man. When man converts and enters into sorrow for his committed sins, and casts away the vanity, and steps into the infant's shirt, then the Morning- Star arises in the spirit of Christ, in the virgin-like, occluse [shut up] ens, in the true, woman's seed.n7411 ¶444
6. And in this anxious sorrowful gate of true Repentance, the angel stands with the fire-flaming sword, and the virgin-bud forces quite through this fire-sword into Paradise, viz. into the light, into the life of Christ, and grows forth through this sword.n7411 ¶445
7. And now the virgin-child stands with its fair rose in the new plant in Paradise, and the poor soul which begets this child stands the whole time of this life under the reach and swing of this firesword, and is fast bound with a band to the gross beast in the outward world. Where the virgin-child is sufficiently thrust at and wounded with this fire- sword;n7411 ¶446
for the fire-soul, which in the fire-sword of God's anger is bound to the Serpent's monster, does daily amuse itself upon the Serpentmonster, and sins. And even then this fire-sword does cut away the sins, and devours them into God's anger, where they are examined and judged.n7411 ¶447
8. Therefore the poor virgin-child which is born out of the soul must stand under Christ's cross, in Christ's death; and the piercing sword of tribulation and grief passes quite through it. It must suffer itself to be drawn quite through this flaming sword; and the fire burns away the abomination which the soul continually brings into itself from the Serpent's monster [or false image]. And even then it is in a sore strait, when that is cut of ffrom the fire-soul which it fain would have from its monster.n7411 ¶448
9. Then must the virgin-child supplicate the fire- soul, and tender it the love, that it should only forsake the monster of the Serpent. Here then arises strife and opposition; for the part of the fire-soul has introduced the Serpent's monster into it, and desires also to have its joy therein, and loves the evil beast.n7411 ¶449
10. Then Sophia, viz. the second Principle, viz. the part of the light- world, does speak against it. And hence comes up the strife betwixt the seed of the woman and the seed of the Serpent; and then man goes up and down in sorrow and sadness, trouble and perplexity; sometimes the virgin-child prevails, and sometimes the Serpent-child.n7411 ¶450
11. And then the devil stirs up and incenses all monsters against the virgin-child, to strike it, to mock it, scorn it, revile, and laugh it to shame, and make it ridiculous; that it may by no means be known, lest the devil's kingdom should become manifest.n7411 ¶451
12. Thus the virgin-child must be exercised by this, in the spirit of Christ, and suffer itself to be whipped, persecuted and injuriously reproved, and often called 'one possessed by the devil'; be cursed, and continually accounted an off-scouring of the world, until the outward beast has finished its course in its constellation. And then the Cherub cuts off the gross beast, and lets it fall even unto the judgement of God. And then the part of the fire-soul must forthwith force through the judgement of this sword.n7411 ¶452
13. Now if the fire-soul has taken in [ Impressed] much vanity into itself, viz. much of the Serpent's craft and lust, then the part of the fire-soul must stand under this sword, until the fire of God's anger consumes this introduced vanity, which to many a one is purgatoryn7411 ¶453
[ Refining fire] enough;n7411 ¶454
which this present too, too wise world will not believe, and will be only an adopted child from without, and so have an external washing away of sins in grace; but it has another ABC here: God will not let the Serpent's ens, neither in body nor soul, come into Paradise.n7411 ¶455
14. The fire-soul must subsist in the fire of God, and be so pure as the clear refined gold, for it is the husband of the noble [virgin] Sophia, [which is] from the woman's seed; it is the fire's tincture, and Sophia the light's tincture. If the tincture of the fire be wholly and thoroughly pure, then its Sophia will be given to it;n7411 ¶456
and so Adam receives again into his arms his most precious and endeared bride, which was taken from him in his sleep, and is not any longer man or woman, but a branch on Christ's pearl-tree, which stands in the Paradise of God.n7411 ¶457
15. To the description whereof we need an angel's tongue, and yet we are understood well enough by our school-fellows. We have not written this for swine;n7411 ¶458
for none but those only who have been by and at the marriage of the lamb do understand what kind of entire inward great joy and lovedelight is therein; and how dearly the bride receives her bridegroom in his pure, clear and bright fire's-property; and how she gives him her love-kiss: unto others this is dumb.n7411 ¶459
16. When reason hears one speak of Paradise, then it understands only a certain place apart: and it is even so. There was a certain place which was called the Garden in Eden, where Adam and Eve were tempted, and from which place they were driven, after the fall.n7411 ¶460
But yet the whole world was such a Paradise before the curse; yet, seeing God knew the fall, the holy Paradise was only opened unto them in one certain place, for to what end should the whole world bring forth paradisical fruit, seeing there was no creature upon the earth that was capable to enjoy the same?n7411 ¶461
17. But Adam and Eve were, however, brought into Paradise, that, although this first body should fall and come to ruin, yet they and their children might, by the new regeneration in the spirit of Christ, enter in again through this fire-sword. This mystery is exceeding great.n7411 ¶462
18. For prince Lucifer, before the time of the created earth, sat in the heavenly ens in the angelical world in the place of this world, wherein the ens of the earth was comprehended in the Fiat, and brought into a compaction; his false imagination had tainted the limus before the compaction: it was the place of his hierarchies. Now the outward body of man was taken out of the limus of the earth in the Verbum Fiat, and formed according to the property of the human life, which was in the Word.n7411 ¶463
The Word formed (by or through the Fiat) the ens or limus of the earth according to the form of the human soul-life which was in the Word;n7411 ¶464
and seeing God had set himself through his Word, to be judged against the false infection and desire of the devil, to judge him and his enkindled [wickedness which he had brought to] substance, the judicial sword was already in the limus of the earth whereof Adam was made.n7411 ¶465
19. For when God created the earth he founded its time when he would keep the judgement, and sever the evil from the good, and give the evil for a habitation to the apostate prince. But seeing the good in the occluse earth was without heavenly creatures (seeing its prince was cast out);n7411 ¶466
God created Adam [as] another hierarch out of this good ens, to be a ruler of this place. And hence came the devil's envy against man and all good creatures of this world.n7411 ¶467
20. But now we are here to consider of the apostacy of man, with the sword of the Cherub. For Saint Paul says: we are chosen in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world was laid;n7411 ¶468
and even here this saying of Paul does belong. God knew that this ens, of which Adam was to be created, was already somewhat subject to false lust by reason of the devil's introduced desire. Therefore God chose [foresaw or provided for] this limus in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world, out of which he would make man;n7411 ¶469
that he would, through the judgement of the flaming sword, bring it through death, and through the fire, and wholly burn away the false infected desire of lust;n7411 ¶470
and regenerate him anew in Jesus, in his deepest love in his Word in Jehovah, that is opened out of Jehovah, and introduce a new limus into the tainted one; and bring them together, quite through the judgement of the fire- sword, and purge and purify them wholly and thoroughly.n7411 ¶471
21. And here also is Christ's descension into hell, where the love of God in Christ entered into this fire-sword and changed the wrath into love; and did also destroy the sting of death which was insinuated into the limus of the earth, out of which Adam was created according to the outward humanity; and this fire-sword had its raising and original in the corruption of Lucifer.n7411 ¶472
22. For albeit Adam was created as to one part out of the heavenly essentiality (that was in the Word of man's life, which was inspired and breathed into his outward and inward limus), yet this fire-sword lay hidden as a glimmering incentive in the earthly limus of the outward body, which also assaulted Adam, so that he lusted against the command of God and the kingdom of heaven. In which incentive the devil also introduced his desire into him, and provoked him to fall;n7411 ¶473
[for] which [fall], seeing God well knew that the poor man would not stand, God ordained a help and Saviour in Christ, to guide and bring him into that holy ens, whereinto he should be brought, viz. into the true sabbath and eternal rest.n7411 ¶474
23. Indeed Adam was set wholly perfect, in equal harmony and accord, and brought into Paradise, [to try] if the soul could have overcome the incentive [of vain lust]. And therefore the Tree of Temptation was represented to him, to see if it were possible for the soul to overpower this contamination of lust, and remain wholly and fully in the likeness [and harmony].n7411 ¶475
24. But it was not possible: therefore Christ must afterwards come into this place, and be tempted forty days in the wilderness, in Adam's ens, and in his new introduced heavenly ens, to see whether the fire-soul would stand in perfect purity. And seeing it did now stand in Christ, the new introduced heavenly ens did destroy the sword in the death of the outward body of Christ, and brought the outward body which he, in Mary, received from her seed, quite through this sword of the anger of God, into the holy ens.n7411 ¶476
And in this power the outward body did arise from death, and got victory over death and this fire-sword, and took the fire-sword into its power; wherewith, at the end of the world, he will purge his floor; as a judge over devils and men, as well as of the earth.n7411 ¶477
25. for the main ambition was about the fire- sword, for king Lucifer had changed it from the pure clear light into fire, wherewith he willed to domineer and rule as a God. But God sent to him another prince and king, who took it from him, and thrust him from this throne, and should turn this sword in the ens of the earth again into the divine property, and cast out and judge the devil with this sword.n7411 ¶478
26. And there is not such a silly and narrow meaning of the firesword as hitherto has been generally understood. Although it has been hidden by the counsel of God, yet we should now open our eyes and deeply consider what this manifestation imports; that it does even foretell and signify the judgement of this sword; that he will come, who carries it in his mouth; and it is also a messenger [declaring] that Babel shall [soon] come to its end by this sword, and be given to this sword to be devoured.n7411 ¶479
27. Now says reason. Wherefore did not God examine this ens afore, out of which he created the earth, and man out of the same earth, before he created the earth and man? Forsooth, dear reason, here you have hit the matter right;n7411 ¶480
God's omnipotence and omniscience must serve your turn, whereby you are able to bring all things into God's will, as rational fancy dictates. Hearken, O reason, do you know whence the earth is generated? You say, through the Word, viz. in the Verbum Fiat, I say so too. Now, what was this Word? Here look upon the earth and the whole creation, and you wilt see what the desire of the Word has brought into being or essence out of the spiritual ens. You will everywhere see good, and evil, and find out God's love and anger.n7411 ¶481
28. The Word was a full spiration from the spiritual fire- and lightworld, according to which God calls himself a strong, jealous, angry God, as to the fire, and a merciful, loving God as to the light.n7411 ¶482
29. Now if God should have quelled [taken away] the first Principle, viz. the fire-source, in the ens of the earth (out of which it was created), whence should the light have its might? Does not the Father, viz. the fire-world, beget the Son, viz. the light-world?n7411 ¶483
But now, seeing the Word in the fire-world was vehemently enkindled by God's motion to the creation, as we may see by the coagulation of the stones, (if we were not blocks, and had only calfish understandings), where-with then should this fire, but especially the enkindled ens in the coagulation, be reduced and brought again into the light, into the equal temperature and harmony? God's love alone must then do it.n7411 ¶484
30. Now, how will [or can] a creature, viz. a fire-soul or angel, come into a creatural being or formation, if the fire-source were not moved and stirred in an especial manner. Like would only then remain in like; and if it be only a mere likeness, then it has its sport with and in itself; as it was from [and in] eternity. And therefore the unchangeable God has moved himself according to the fire and light, and stirred up the fire's property, that he may make him a play and melody, viz. a formed Word out of himself, that there might be a play before and in the unformable Word.n7411 ¶485
31. Now we do here understand this, that if God should have again introduced the enkindled ens, out of which the earth and man were created, into the unformable Word, viz. wholly and fully into the likeness, into the love, then no creature might have been produced or brought forth; for every soul's spirit, yea the angels, and whatsoever lives, must be a stirring [or working] fire.n7411 ¶486
32. Now no fire-source can be generated out of the perfect likeness, unless the likeness does move itself. Yet the eternal likeness, viz. God, had before moved himself in his Mystery with the creation of the angelical thrones. Now if he should have changed this motion (which was enkindled, and also poisoned by the hierarch Lucifer with false distemper) into love, before he had created the earth and man, then he must yet once more have moved himself according to the fire's property, if he would have created another hierarch and angelical prince.n7411 ¶487
33. But seeing that might not be, he created the earth, and out of the earth, man, out of the first motion; and breathed into man the light- and fire-soul, out of that breath of his manifested and moved Word, viz. out of the first motion. For out of the first motion of the Word another prince should come into the princely created throne of Lucifer, and take in and possess the first motion.n7411 ¶488
34. And God appointed the judgement to the first motion, and took away Lucifer's domineering fire-sword, and gave it unto Adam; and afterwards introduced the deepest love of God in Christ into Adam, and brought the moved Word again into the likeness, viz. into an eternal confirmation, and gave Adam in Christ the fire-sword over the fallen prince Lucifer.n7411 ¶489
35. for Adam, viz. the corrupted limus of the earth, should, in Christ its first enjoyed prince, judge with this flaming sword; as Paul has told us, that the saints shall judge the world. Understand, the enkindled ens of man and of the earth should judge the false prince of lies, who had perversely changed the truth in the holy ens into lies, and corrupted it with such [false desire] .n7411 ¶490
36. But seeing the ens of man was corrupted, and could not, God, out of his deepest hiddenness, introduced the most holy ens into the corrupt ens of man, viz. into the heavenly part, and brought the outward [part] also through the sword of the fire and death into the inward, into an eternal likeness [or temperature]. And thus there is here a looking-glass for reason. If reason be illuminated of God it will then understand us here; but if it be not, then there is not any possibility to understand this.n7411 ¶491
37. And we faithfully and seriously warn the caviller and carper, not to say it is a blasphemy. Let him first put away his calfish and bestial eyes; and look us here in the face, before he takes upon him to censure and cavil at us; it has far another ABC than reason has.n7411 ¶492
It must have its birth a degree deeper.n7411 ¶493
38. Thus we are able very well to understand the casting out of Adam, wherefore he was tempted, and driven out of Paradise. Seeing his ens was somewhat enkindled by the devil's poison he could not possess Paradise; and therefore God drove him out from thence with the sword of judgement into death and corruption.n7411 ¶494
And yet gave the promised Word of his deepest love to be with and in him in the ens of the heavenly world's being, for a sure and certain Covenant; wherein Adam and his children should trust, and believe that at the end and accomplishment of this time he would in this incorporated Word bring them again, with the introduction of the holy ens, out of death through the fire-sword; and clean cut off the false infection and lust with the sword of judgement, and set them as angels of God in the place of fallen Lucifer: And this is the mystery of the angel and sword of Paradise.n7411 ¶495
39. The angel did bear the name of the Covenant, out of which God would manifest Jesus, viz. the high and almighty prince. And it was even this angel which afterwards wrought many wonders upon the earth, who was with Abel, Shem, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Moses;n7411 ¶496
who appeared to Moses in the fire-sword of flame in the bush, and brought Israel out of Egypt, and went before them in a fiery pillar [by night], and in a cloudy pillar by day; who gave them the Law in the fire, and at last brought them by Joshua (being the type of Him who was to be born out of the fire-sword) into the Land [of] Israel.n7411 ¶497
40. This fire-angel turned its internal light outwards, and manifested itself in Christ's person in the humanity, with whom [or in which] Christ, viz. the holy anointing oil of the deepest hidden love, changed the fire- sword of the angel into a love- sword and holy dominion.n7411 ¶498
41. And this is the true Cherub which drove the false Adam out of Paradise, and brings him in again by Christ, the virgin's child, new born out of Adam in Christ; and it has no other ground or meaning.n7411 ¶499
The Twenty-Sixth Chaptern7411 ¶500
Of the Propagation of Man in this World, and of Cain, the First-born, The Murderer of his Brothern7411 ¶501
1. WE are here to consider this weighty point in right earnestness; and not to make conclusions with fictions and fables, as hitherto has been done as touching the election of Grace; whereas it has been handled only in a very blind and absurd manner, and no right [fundamental] understanding has been found thereof.n7411 ¶502
2. Seeing that men have sought only in reason, and have not been able through true repentance to force through the fire-sword, and see with divine eyes, thereupon the fire-sword of God's anger and severe purpose and decree of judgement has remained in the eyes of [their] reason alone; and further they have not seen. Therefore they have made dreadful and dangerous conclusions, without fundamental and plain understanding.n7411 ¶503
3. But Christendom is hereby faithfully and truly admonished, once throughly to awake, and shake off the conclusions of reason, and to see God's clear countenance, which desires no evil, nor can desire it; but has also set himself to be judge against all wickedness, and will destroy all such conclusions in the sword of his anger, and do away the Cherub.n7411 ¶504
4. Now it does here offer itself to our consideration, how it came to pass that Adam and Eve at first brought forth an evil child and a murderer. To this, reason says that it was from God's purpose, who has made to himself an Election, and chose one company of men to damnation, and the other unto his love.n7411 ¶505
5. Forsooth! dear reason: Whence are you born? and from whence do you speak under the cover of the Scripture? Do you not speak from the ens and words of the Serpent? Who brought the false ens into Eve her matrix, wherein Cain was apprehended? Did not the devil do it through the Serpent, and make the matrix of Eve monstrous?n7411 ¶506
6. Do you not understand how the Word of Promise did forthwith incorporate itself into the matrix of Eve in her seed, and that the contest between God's anger and God's love did presently begin; for God's love had incorporated itself [and betrothed itself] to bruise the head of the Serpent's monster in the anger of God; and thereinto the fire-soul, which lay captivated in God's anger, should give its free will.n7411 ¶507
7. For the fire-soul is a root proceeded from the divine omnipotence, and therefore it has free will, and nothing can deprive it thereof: It may conceive either in the life or in the light.n7411 ¶508
8. But if you ask why the Serpent-Bruiser did not forthwith bruise the head of the Serpent's ens in the first seed, and not suffer the Serpent's murderous, poisonful will to get the upper hand in the soul's ens, it is just as if I should ask, Wherefore did not God, when he saw that Adam became evil, wholly reject him, or make him to nothing, and create a new Adam? Thus likewise will reason judge of the devils, saying that it has pleased God that there should be devils, that it might be known what an angel is.n7411 ¶509
9. Hearken reason! I have above already answered you, that if God should once more have moved himself for man's sake, and introduced the first motion in the human and earthly ens into a stillness, then the six days' works of the creation must have retired back; and have been brought into a workless rest. And this, God would not; the whole creation should and must subsist in its first motion; its first formed ens in the Verbum Fiat must stand, be it either in love or in anger, let who will, apprehend either: the anger was open, and so was the love also.n7411 ¶510
10. Only the love is called God: the anger is called his strength and might. Now what the free will would desire, therein it should be confirmed, either in the love or in the anger.n7411 ¶511
11. For the free will was born or sprung forth from the love and anger, viz. from the fire- and light-world: and so likewise it might choose itself a place for its working life. If God's love should have drowned the free will in the ens in Eve's seed in the love, (in which [seed] it [the free will] was enkindled in the anger) , then the fiery motion in the matrix must have ceased. Now, out of the light's ens only and alone no soul may be brought forth.n7411 ¶512
12. Also the corrupt ens of the earthly limus must have then been presently judged through the fire, which could not be; for the motion of the new regeneration, and the opening or full explication of the divine sweetness, and the overcoming of the fire, viz. of the anger of God, did belong only to the name of Jesus.n7411 ¶513
13. The Word which had incorporated itself had [done this] from without the fire-sword, viz. the Cherub, and from within the Jesus, who should overcome the fire-sword with love. Thus the name Jesu stood hidden in the fire-sword, and was not manifest until the time that God would move himself therein, and manifest the same.n7411 ¶514
14. Thus the insinuated ens of the Serpent, that Eve had introduced through imagination into lust, must be wholly cast away; for in Cain the murdering image [or the evil corrupt nature and property of the Serpent]was manifest, which cannot inherit the kingdom of God. But on the contrary, the mark of the Covenant in the promised Word was in the free will, and in the heavenly disappeared ens of the soul, into which [Covenant of the promised grace] the soul should enter.n7411 ¶515
15. And although the Serpent's ens should have been rejected (as it must be, in all the children of Eve), yet the part of the heavenly world's being lay hidden in the Covenant of the Word in the disappeared ens, as a possibility to the new regeneration. Therefore God said to Cain, when the murdering spirit persuaded him, Rule over the sin.n7411 ¶516
16. If you say, Wherewith? He could not! But wherefore could he not? The Serpent's desire held him, and brought him to kill his brother: Wherefore? The free will had given itself up into the Serpent's ens which held him captive.n7411 ¶517
17. Now says reason, God would have it so, else he had turned away his will. No. Indeed God's anger-will in the Serpent's ens which had captivated the free will would have it. But yet God's love-will said in him, Rule over sin, that is, over the wrath and anger of the Serpent, and let it not have its power and prevalency.n7411 ¶518
18. And here we are rightly to know how God's love and anger are in continual contest, understand, in the manifested Word in the limus of the earth, and in the ens of the human property out of the earth. For the anger-ens is stirred up and driven by the devil, and desires continually to devour the love-ens, and possess this kingdom in the anger-ens.n7411 ¶519
19. The anger-ens desires to have man; for it has its king in Lucifer. And the love-ens desires also to have him; for it has its king in Christ. And therefore Christ must bring the human love-ens through death and the anger-ens, and open another Principle, viz. another kingdom; and leave prince Lucifer in his own anger, for his free will had chosen it him.n7411 ¶520
20. Thus also the free will in Cain did choose the false, viz. the devil's will. But you say, Was then the murdering-will wholly rejected? It did reject [abandon] itself; but if the free will had again conceived in the love-ens it would have been again born anew, yea even after the murder: which we leave unto the judgement of God, whether it were so or no, seeing the text in Moses does give him so bare a name in despair. For the Word, out of which the name Jesus was made manifest, was given to call poor lost sinners to repentance, and not the righteous ones, who were apprehended in the love; as Christ said.n7411 ¶521
21. Cain was a type of the first corrupt Adam in sin, and Abel was a type of Christ, the second Adam, viz. of the virgin-child; for the tree of evil and good began in Adam. And so likewise the fruit did forthwith appear, viz. Christ's children, and the children of the devil and the Serpent.n7411 ¶522
22. Now reason says, Was Cain then wholly conceived of the Serpent's ens in the anger of God, and predestinated to damnation? No. He was [conceived] of the ens of Adam's soul and body; and so also of the seed and ens of Eve her body;n7411 ¶523
but the monster in the matrix of Eve did environ the sown seed; and it was that which did seduce and beguile him; but the mark [and aim] of the Covenant lay hidden in the ens of the soul and body. For the ens of the seed of Adam and Eve was out of the heavenly disappeared [limus], and then also out of the earthly awakened limus; but the will of the Serpent and of the devil took possession of the house, as the like was in the devil, who was an angel; but the will of the dark world took possession of the house in him, and got the upper hand: so also it was here, in Cain.n7411 ¶524
23. But you ask, How came this so to be? Hear and see, you fair child in the will of Adam and Eve, what their desire was before and after the fall: They desired the earthly kingdom, as we see that Eve was so wholly and only minded;n7411 ¶525
for when she brought forth Cain, she said, I have gotten a man [who is to be] a Lord (Gen. iv. I). She thought him to be the bruiser and breaker of the Serpent; he should take in and possess the earthly kingdom, and expel the devil;n7411 ¶526
she did not consider that she should die to her false earthly fleshly will, and be born anew in a holy will. And such a will she also brought into her seed; and the like did Adam also.n7411 ¶527
24. And hence now the will in the soul's essence did arise: the tree brought forth a twig out of [or like] itself. For it was Cain's desire only that he might be lord upon the earth; and being he saw that Abel was more acceptable in God's sight than himself; his free bestial will in him did elevate itself to slay Abel;n7411 ¶528
for Cain's aim and endeavour was alone about the outward world, to domineer and be lord and master therein; but Abel sought God's love.n7411 ¶529
25. Thus there are yet two such Churches upon the earth; one which seeks only worldly pleasure, might, honour, and the outward god Mammon and Mausim (see Ch. 36, 32), and therein it lodges the Serpent's child. The other, which seeks the virginchild and God's kingdom, and must suffer itself to be persecuted, reviled, reproached, and killed by the Cainical Church, as Cain did to Abel.n7411 ¶530
26. For the devil will yet be continually a prince of this world in the Serpent's child; and so it is that if the virgin's child (which bruises the head of the Serpent) be not manifest in the Serpent's child, then the devil is and remains prince and host in the house of the soul: as happened to Cain.n7411 ¶531
27. And do but understand the ground aright: In the birth of this world two kingdoms lie manifest, viz. God's Love-kingdom in Christ, and the kingdom of God's anger in Lucifer: these two kingdoms are in contest and strife in all creatures, for the original of all spirits is in the contest, and in the combat of the fire the light is made manifest. The fire is a cause of the light: God's anger is a cause that God did yet once move himself in his deepest love in the name Jesus, and thereby vanquish the anger.n7411 ¶532
28. Now what can the love do, if the free will espouses itself to the anger? Or what can the anger do against it, if the free will conceives in the love, and destroys the anger? Must it not hold still and suffer it to be done; and though it does oppose and rage against it, yet the love pierces quite through it, and changes it into joy. The anger is the root of love, as the fire is the root of the light; but in the free will is the understanding, which makes itself to what it pleases.n7411 ¶533
29. Do you not see this in the earth, that the free will in the ens of the Word has made itself stones, metals and earth. The stones and earth are not the free will; but the free will has introduced itself into such an ens, and by its lubet and motion introduced the ens into a compaction or coagulation; there was no other maker there but the free will in the formed and manifested Word: you mayest indeed see wonders enough.n7411 ¶534
30. Behold the irrational creatures, as worms, toads, spiders and other wild venomous and horrible beasts, and you shall see somewhat in very deed, if you are not dead. But you say, God has created it so. Yea, right! his desire in love and anger has amassed the ens with the motion, and compacted each ens according to the free will into a form. There was no other maker there, but the free will in the Word.n7411 ¶535
31. The desire in the Word was the Fiat, which introduced the free will into an ens. Thus the same manifested Word is yet in all things, and has the Fiat, viz. the desire in itself: As the free will in every thing introduces itself into a spirit, even so the Fiat forms and signs each thing. Every root brings forth from itself a branch of its own likeness; but when the branch or sprout is to be born and receive its beginning in the ens of the root, the ens does then form itself to such a twig as the root at that time is apprehended in its power and free will, both by the superior and inferior constellation.n7411 ¶536
32. The like is also to be understood in man. As the will is, in the seed, that is, as the desire of the father and mother are, at the time (together with other influences from the stars and elements), yea, oftentimes from the devil's assaults and insinuations, even such a spirit is formed in the ens of the seed; sometimes an angel, if the parents be in holy desire [or in the true faith of the engrafted Word] ; sometimes also a beast, a serpent and image of the devil, both according to the ens of the soul and of the outward flesh.n7411 ¶537
33. The power of the manifested Word does give in itself into all things, into everything according to its will, according to the desire in the ens; for the desire in the ens is that which forms the word, viz. the sound of life ;n7411 ¶538
as it is written, such as the people is, such a God they also have, with the holy you are holy, and with the perverse you are perverse. This is wholly to be understood concerning the expressed Word in the Fiat, viz. in the desire of nature. And therefore God has espoused and betrothed another Word out of the centre of his love to the image of man, that, although he be arisen out of an evil property, yet the free will has power and information to disclaim its selfhood, and die to its self in this holy incorporated Word;n7411 ¶539
and then the Fiat begets and forms another new creature in the free will out of the ens.n7411 ¶540
34. The possibility lies in all men, but the making or forming of the child of God belongs now to the holy Fiat in the new introduced Word, for it lies not on any man's self-willing, contriving, running, and toiling, but on God's mercy. He has mercy upon whom he please, viz. upon those alone who with their free will die to their selfhood in his grace, and resign up their selves to him. And he hardens whom he please, viz. those alone who run with selfish Cain, and would themselves take the kingdom of God in their own evil will, and will not die to their own self-full will.n7411 ¶541
35. Now says the Scripture, has not a potter power to make of one lump of clay what he please; a vessel to honour; or a vessel to dishonour; that is, will the self-full will be angry, if it be evil, that the Fiat in the Word makes it to be a vessel of the anger; or will it therefore be angry, if the holy Fiat (in the holy Word) makes that will, which dives itself into the love and mercy of God, and dies to its selfhood, to be a vessel of honour, has not this Potter power to do with his clay, viz. (with the ens or seed) what he please. Whereunto every seed is good and profitable, thereunto he makes him a vessel, either to the use of his anger or to the use of his love.n7411 ¶542
36. The holy is unto God a sweet savour to life, and the wicked a sweet savour to the death in his anger; all must enter into his glory, and praise him; one in the property of his anger, who must call the evil good; the other in the property of his love, who must call the good, good. For so it must be, that the difference of the good and evil, of the light and darkness, of the life and death, may be known; for if there were no death, then the life were not manifest to itself; and if there were no darkness, the light were not manifest to itself.n7411 ¶543
37. And therefore the eternal free will has introduced itself into darkness, pain, and source; and so also through the darkness into the fire and light, even into a kingdom of joy; that so the Nothing might be known in the Something, and that it might have a sport in its contra- will, that the free will of the abyss might be manifest to itself in the byss, for without evil and good there could not be any byss [ground or foundation] .n7411 ¶544
38. For the evil makes pain and motion, and the good causes essence and power; and yet both essences are only one essence, as fire and light are only one essence, also darkness and light are only one; but it severs itself into two mighty distinctions, and yet there is no sundry separation, for one dwells in the other, and yet does not comprehend the other; the one does deny the other, for the one is not the other.n7411 ¶545
39. God dwells through all, and that all is not God, also it does not reach him; but whatsoever quits itself free of its free will, that falls into his possession: that he must have, for it is willless, and falls into the Nothing; and he is in the Nothing. Thus the resigned will may dwell in the Nothing, and there is God's mercy; for he will have Something out of the Nothing, that he may be manifest in the Something, and therefore he has mercy upon the Something which is fallen into his Nothing, and makes it in himself to be his Something; which he himself rules, drives and acts with his merciful spirit.n7411 ¶546
40. And herein lies the precious pearl, dear brethren who are driven too and fro with contention; if ye did but know it you would leave off from strife and call reason a fool. No searchings of self obtains it, but the will freely resigned into God's mercy, which enters in by the way of earnest repentance, and mortification of its own evil will: that [will] falls into God's mercy, and does apprehend [and obtain the right understanding] . And without this there is mere self -running, walking, and willing; and yet nothing can he obtained, save only in the will freely resigned into God's mercy.n7411 ¶547
41 . We have a very excellent and notable example and type of this in the first birth, which opened the womb, that it was to be sanctified and offered up to,the Lord; and yet the true living offering proceeds from the second, new birth, as we may see in Abel, Isaac and Jacob. Cain, Ishmael and Esau were the first-born, the inheritance belonged to them; but the lot and mercy fell upon Abel, Isaac and Jacob; for the first ens of man was infected and made crazy by the devil. Therefore it must be given to the fire for an offering and food; and out of the offering, viz. out of the fire of God's anger, the love of God was made manifest in mercy;n7411 ¶548
and the first Adam was the sojourner [servant] of the second in Christ, for the second redeemed the first.n7411 ¶549
42. The devil's desire and the bestial ens of the Serpent had got the upper hand in the matrix of Eve, and apprehended the first seed in the desire. Now the kingdom of God did yet belong to the first man, but seeing he did lose it by his negligence the first Adam must be offered to the earth, and also its first seed [must be offered] to then7411 ¶550
43. And after this first seed Abel came forth in the holy Covenant, and offered his sweet blood, to the anger for the sinful seed, that the anger might let its flame fall, and suffer the first birth to press through in the blood of the second [ through death and the anger inton7411 ¶551
44. The first birth was a murderer, which signifies the devil in man. The second was the offering of [or for] the first, that the angerdevil in the first Adam might be appeased in the offering of the second.n7411 ¶552
45. Not that we would exalt or take in the wicked into the offering of Christ, so long as he is wicked; the devil devours most of the wicked crew: only, the wicked sinner has an open gate made for him in the offering of the second [Adam], if he did convert and turn himself (from his wickedness).n7411 ¶553
46. But that some write, there was a twofold seed which did sever itself in Eve, viz. one wholly devilish from the ens of then7411 ¶554
Serpent, and the other from the ens of Christ [or the promised seed of the woman] in the Covenant [is nothing so] . These have not at all learned the A B C in this school. They have only a dreaming shadow and fiction of the Mystery, and not the true sight. Thus they build the election of grace upon this; but they are much mistaken; they speak only the Serpent's words, which desired to have it so. Observe it thus:n7411 ¶555
47. Adam had only one limbus to his seed, and Eve only one matrix for her seed, but they both stood in three Principles. The Principles were in contest, as still they are at this day. The second Principle, viz. the kingdom of God or the angelical world, did disappear in the soul's seed, and God espoused his only, most holy Word again therein, unto the new birth.n7411 ¶556
48. And this espousal or betrothment stood as well in Cain's ens as in Abel's ens. But in the striving wrestling wheel, in the contest of the three Principles, Cain's ens was apprehended in the anger, and covered with the Serpent's monster. Not so, to an impossibility, as if he were born to condemnation; but even to a possibility of the free will, whether he would lay down the self-full, assumed, and selfappropriated right in Adam, and live in God's will, or whether he would live unto himself: Upon this was the election set.n7411 ¶557
49. Now God knows whereinto the free will is entered: If it be entered into iniquity and selfhood, then God's anger establishes or confirms it in its choice to condemnation; but if it be entered into the Word of the Covenant, then God confirms it to be a child of heaven. And here that saying has its proper signification and application, I have mercy on whom I will, and whom I will I harden. God knows his children even in the ens in the mother's womb; to what end should he give his pearl to him whom he yet knows would turn himself away from him? The pearl's ground lies indeed in man, but hidden and shut up; if he brought his will into the pearl it would open itself in him.n7411 ¶558
50. All men proceed from one only seed; but in one the holy fire glimmers, and in another it lies as 'twere shut up and cannot [glimmer] by reason of the mire of the Serpent.n7411 ¶559
51. You say, Then is the Serpent's ens more mighty thann7411 ¶560
God's love? I have already answered you, that love and anger are in contest. Whereinto the ens does espouse itself; of that it is apprehended and confirmed; yet so, that the will is free to go from the evil into the good, and from the good into the evil; and that while it lives upon the earth both doors stands open unto it: for the free will is not bound: but if it were bound then no judgement could with righteousness pass upon it. It has laws and instructions, which are given it, not unto death but unto life; but if it transgresses these, and continues in the transgression, now the judgement passes upon it; for every judgement [or sentence of condemnation] arises from the transgression of the command.n7411 ¶561
52. you say he cannot keep them, he is drawn [to transgression]. Yea, very right. Does not the truth rebuke him even to the face, that he is a faithless wretch, that suffers himself to be drawn to evil. The law to do right is in his vital light as a continual lookingglass: he sees and knows it very well, that he is a liar, and walks upon the way of the devil: it shows him the way of truth, but the free will rejects it;n7411 ¶562
at present he is predestinated to condemnation, yet so, that the will is free so long as he is in this cottage. But the heavy band of God's anger, in the drawing of the devil's desire, draws many a one to the damnation of death.n7411 ¶563
53. Reason says, If a man has free will, then God is not omnipotent over him, to do what he please with him. The free will is not from any beginning, also not amassed or taken out of any ground into any thing, or formed by any thing.n7411 ¶564
It is its own peculiar original out of the Word of the divine power, out of God's love and anger. It forms itself in its own will a centre to its seat; it begets itself in the first Principle to the fire and light; its right and genuine original is in the Nothing, where the Nothing, viz. the /_V [triangle forward slash]n7411 ¶565
(or as a man might unfold it, A. O. V.) does introduce itself into a lubet to contemplation; and the lubet brings itself into a will, and the will into a desire, and the desire into a substance.n7411 ¶566
54. Now the Eternal Original, viz. God, is a Judge over the substance; if the lubet (which is departed from him) has introduced itself into an evil being, then he judges that being or substance in its Principle. In what source and property soever, or in what ens soever, the lubet, proceeding from the departed /_V, has introduced itself into a Principle, therein the universal eternal free will, which is the abyss, and cause of all byss, does confirm and settle it.n7411 ¶567
55. The abyssal judges that which does introduce itself into byss, and severs the good (which has introduced itself into a good ens) into the good, viz. into the divine love; and the evil (which has brought itself into an evil ens, and set and formed itself into a centre to an evil spirit and will) into his wrath and anger.n7411 ¶568
56. For how can he judge a thing whose own it is not? How would God judge the will of the creature, if it were not sprung [or arisen] from him? Or rather, how can a judgement pass upon a thing which is bound, and not free in its willing and working?n7411 ¶569
57. The human and angelical will is arisen with the motion of the abyss (when the Deity once moved itself in its contemplation and sensation, and with the motion introduced itself into a beginning of the spirits) [the will of men and angels did spring forth] out of this beginning. Now every beginning goes into its end; and the end is that which was before the beginning; and there is the trial of the beginning, [which shows] whereinto the beginning has introduced itself.n7411 ¶570
58. Now God is before and without all beginnings, and from him every beginning proceeds; also he is the end of all beginnings. Now the middle of all inchoated things stands between the beginning and the end; for it must with its beginning enter again through the end into that whence it did arise.n7411 ¶571
59. Seeing then that God is a jealous God, and a consuming fire, and also a merciful God, every free will with its introduced centre has its own judge born in itself; either divine love, or divine anger; for when a thing begins, it goes into a time, but when this time is apprehended of the end, viz. of the eternity, then it is in its own eternal [beginning and end], whence it has introduced itself into a compaction, so confirmed to eternity.n7411 ¶572
60. Therefore, the free will has its own judgement, either for the good or [for the] evil, in itself: It has its own judgement in itself: it has God's love and anger in it; what it amasses and desires, that it forms in itself; and does so form only its own self in its own lubet into a centre.n7411 ¶573
61. For thus the world has likewise its original, namely, in the free will of the two eternal Principles, both from the dark fire-lubet, and also from the divine light fire-lubet. The free will introduced itself in the Verbum Fiat into distinct and several entities; and that even according to the possibility of the eternal pregnatress. As the will in the Verbum Fiat conceived itself in each place in the pregnatress, even such an ens was brought forth, and out of the ens arose its spirit according to the ens, viz. from God's spiration or motion [Breathing or stirring up] in the Principles.n7411 ¶574
62. But seeing the Principles were together as one, no thing was ever amassed or formed in the free will but the same has a good and an evil in it, according to the nature and power of the eternal pregnatress, to light and darkness.n7411 ¶575
63. But now every spirit arises with its free will first out of the compaction of its centre, and is, after its effected birth, free, and may draw into itself either out of God's love, or anger, and introduce its will as it pleases. But this is the main thing: as the mother (viz. the ens) is, whereof the spirit is born, even such a lubet arises also in then7411 ¶576
64. Now the spirit has understanding, and the ens has none;n7411 ¶577
also it [ the spirit] has a law, for it knows what is evil and good, what is right and wrong. Also God has given it laws, that it should break the lust [to evil], and with the understanding of the light rule over the lubet of the darkness.n7411 ¶578
65. Now if it does not, but departs with the lubet out of the understanding into a self-lubet, then the lubet or lust does amass into a substance, whereof a new, false will is again born. And this same is a bastard before God and the eternal nature; for it arises not out of the law and right of the eternal nature, but out of self. And upon this the judgement of the eternal nature does pass; and at its end (when the centre of the spirit shall step again into the beginning) it will be spewed out from the free will of eternity.n7411 ¶579
66. Understand us but aright: The first free will, which was breathed into Adam, was good; indeed it was both from God's love and anger, viz. from the centre of the eternal pregnatress, of the eternal spiritual nature; but it had the understanding in it to rule and govern itself so it might stand and subsist eternally.n7411 ¶580
67. But the crafty distemper or infection introduced by the devil was in the ens of the earth whence [whereof] Adam's outward body was formed. Into this earthly ens the devil brought his desire by the Serpent, viz. by the Serpent's crafty ens, so that the lubet arose in the ens of the body, whereinto the first free will of the inspired soul entered, and assumed the lubet of the body, and introduced this lubet into a desire to substance.n7411 ¶581
68. And out of this substance another new self-full will did now arise, viz. a bastard, a false serpent-child; and this bastard, Adam did originally propagate to his Eve, and Eve to her son Cain, and so one man to another. Thus we have now in this earthly flesh this same false will proceeded from the Serpent's substance, whereinto the devil introduces his desire, and tempts us, and continually makes us lust and long after the devilish property [viz. pride, covetousness, envy, and anger], that so his desire, which he insinuates into the false bastard in us, might become substantial and essential; out of which such a whorish and devilish serpentine seed is continually begotten; and out of the same false ens [or seed] a devil's will [is begotten].n7411 ¶582
69. Thus the devil rides in and upon man, in and upon body and soul. But now the first introduced free will, which God breathed into Adam, lies yet in all men, for it is the true real soul, the centre of the fire and light, a spark of the divine power and omnipotence, but wholly hemmed in and captivated in this wicked introduced bastard.n7411 ¶583
70. Therefore God has again in-hested [ Imputed, introduced recalled or really promised into the soul] and incorporated the aim of his new Covenant, in the Word of the divine holy power, in the name of Jesus, into the property of the lightful fire (viz. into the disappeared heavenly holy ens, which did disappear in the darkness), that the first free will (which now lies captive in the child of the whore and Serpent) should introduce its desire into this aim of the promised Covenant (which he has fulfilled in Christ's humanity), and with the desire of the soul's free will re-introduce the holy ens of Christ (which he [Christ] in the seed of Mary introduced into our disappeared ens) into its disappeared heavenly ens. And if it does bring it so to pass, then out of this introduced ens of Christ arises Christ's spirit, which destroys the false will of the Serpent's bastard in the flesh, and tramples upon its head.n7411 ¶584
71. Now says reason, God gives this holy new ens of Christ to whom he will, and suffers whom he please to harden and remain captive in the Serpent's ens. Yes, very right: He gives none this holy ens into the self-will of his Serpent's child; there belongs far another earnestness thereto; for selfhood cannot now any more take any thingn7411 ¶585
72. But this is the process which the free will must go, if it will receive the holy ens: it must wind itself out of the Serpent's desire (out of its selfish-self and somethingness), and wind itself into God's mercy;n7411 ¶586
and become a deadly mortifying enemy to the fleshly desire in itself: It must wholly forsake and depart from the self-full desire of the flesh;n7411 ¶587
and bring its hunger wholly and only into the mortification of its selfish somethingness, desiring and endeavouring continually and willingly to die to its iniquity and false desire (which sticks in the flesh, in the Serpent's child), and in Christ's ens arise with a new will.n7411 ¶588
73. This desire, which departs from the Serpent's ens, and hungers after God's mercy, receives Christ's ens into itself, whence a new will is born, which bruises the head of the Serpent in the flesh, for it is the new birth out of God in Christ Jesus.n7411 ¶589
74. But if you will say, you cannot desire any good, that is not true. [We reply:] you alone suffer the Serpent's will in your right eternal soul's will to hold you; and with the soul's will do play the whore with the Serpent's will in the flesh; from whence arises God's election.n7411 ¶590
75. God knows the false whorish soul which does only woo and wantonise with the Serpent, (with the idol Babel), and will still live in the lust and will of the flesh and of the Serpent; and yet wills to be an outwardly adopted child: God should forgive it its sins by an outward word-speaking, but it wills still to hang and cleave to the wanton love of the Serpent in its false lust. This, God chooses to judgement.n7411 ¶591
76. For the free will which was inspired into Adam, and which it [the soul] has inherited from Adam, hangs on Lucifer; and thereforen7411 ¶592
God confirms it unto the kingdom of darkness with Lucifer; but the gate of grace stands yet open unto it [during] this time of the outward life.n7411 ¶593
The Twenty-Seventh Chaptern7411 ¶594
Of Cain's and Abel's offering and of the False and Antichristian Church, and also of the True Holy Churchn7411 ¶595