The Confessions of Jacob Boehme

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unfold their powers to stir up and unite with the wrath in the outermost of nature.

Therefore if anyone should be damned into hell he ought not to say that God has done it, or that he wills it to be so. Man awakens the wrath-fire in himself, and this, if it grows burning, afterwards unites with God's wrath and the hellish fire, as one thing.

For when thy light is extinguished, then thou standest in the darkness. Within the darkness the wrath of God is concealed, and if thou awakenest it, then it burns in thee.

There is fire even in a stone : if you do not strike upon it the fire remains concealed ; but, if you strike it, then the fire springs forth, and if any combustible matter be near it, that will take fire and burn, and so there comes to be a great fire. Thus it is also with man, when he kindles the wrath-fire which is otherwise at rest.

CHAPTER IV

WHEN thou beholdest the deep above the earth thou oughtest not to say that it is not the gate of God where God in his holiness dwells : No, no, think not so, for the whole Holy Trinity, God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, dwells in the centre under the firmament of heaven, though that very firmament cannot comprehend him.

Indeed all is as it were one body, the outermost and the innermost moving together with the firmament of heaven, as also the astral moving therein, in and with which the wrath of God unfolds ; but yet they are one to another as the government, frame or constitution in man.

The flesh marks the outward moving,p. 33 which is the house of death. The second moving in man is the astral, in which the life stands, and wherein love and wrath wrestle one with another. Thus far man himself knows himself, for the astral generates the life in the outermost, that is, in the flesh. The third moving is generated between the astral and the outermost, and is called the animated or soulish moving, or the soul, and is as great as the whole man.

That moving the outward man neither knows nor comprehends, neither does the astral comprehend it ; but every fountain spirit comprehends its innate source, which resembles the heaven.

The animated or soulish man must press through the firmament of heaven to God, and live with God, else the whole man cannot come into heaven to God.

Man cannot be wholly pure from wrath
and sin, for the movings of the depth in
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this world are not fully pure before the Heart of God ; always love and wrath wrestle one with another.

In the second, the astral, wherein now the love and the wrath are against one another, is a spirit of the life, and of the firmament of heaven which is of the midst of the spirit.

And the Devil can reach half into this moving, so far as the wrath reaches and no farther ; therefore the Devil cannot know how the other part in this moving has its source. This other part of the astral, which abides in the love, is the firmament of heaven holding captive the kindled wrath ; together with all the devils, for they cannot enter thereinto. In that heaven dwells the Holy Spirit, which goes forth from the Heart of God, and strives against the wrath, and generates to himself a temple in the midst of the fierceness of the wrath of God.

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And in this heaven dwells the man that fears God, even while alive in the bodyhere upon earth ; for that heaven is as well in man as in the deep above the earth. And as the deep above the earth is, so is man also, both in love and wrath, till after the departure of the soul ; but when the soul departs from the body, then it abides either only in the heaven of love or only in the wrath.

And in this heaven the holy angels dwell amongst us, and the devils in the other part. In this heaven man lives between heaven and hell, and must suffer from the wrath and endure many hard blows, temptations, persecutions ; and, many times, torments and oppression.