The Signature of All Things — trans. John Ellistone (1651)

21. It has two Properties in itself, viz. according to the Impression or Desire it is dark and hard; and according to the Desire of the Will, which wills to be free from the Anguish, and enters again into the Liberty, it is spiritual and Light; and the Sting breaks in pieces its conceived Essence which the astringent Desire conceives in itself, so that its Essence is hard and spalt [brittle], and wholly darting as a Flash of Lightning from the Darkness, and from the Desire of the Light, understand to the Liberty.

22. Now these three Forms are in one Essence as a raging Spirit; and the Desire impresses these Properties, so that an Essence is made according to their Property, viz. according to the astringent dark Desire, viz. according to the first Original: There is an earthly Essence, out of which in the Beginning of the great Motion the Earth was made, and according to the bitter raging Spirit there is the Instigation in the Essence, viz. a Poison, and it also imprints [or impresses] itself in the Essence, from whence the Earthliness is so wholly loathsome and bitter; and the third Form, viz. the Anguish gives a fiery Property thereinto; and yet here there cannot be as yet any Essence, but it is only a spiritual Essence, and the Mother to the Essence.

23. The fourth Form in this Essence is the Fire, which as to one Part takes its Original out of the dark hard Impression, viz. from the Hardness, and from the raging Sting in the Anguish, which is the cold black Fire, and the Pain of the great Anguish; and as to the other Part it takes its Original in the Will's Spirit to Nature, which goes again out of this hard dark Coldness into itself, viz. into the Liberty without the Nature of the austere Motion, and enkindles the Liberty, viz. the eternal Lubet to the Desire of Nature, with its Sharpness, which it has conceived in the Impression, whereby it is a moving and stirring Lustre: For the Liberty is neither dark nor light; but by Reason of the Motion it is Light, for its Lubet brings itself into the Desire to Light, that it may be manifest in the Light and Lustre; and yet it cannot be otherwise brought to pass but through Darkness, so that the Light might be made known and manifest, and the eternal Mind might find and manifest itself; for a Will is only one Thing and Essence, but through the multiplicity its Form is made manifest, that it is infinite, and a mere Wonder, of which we speak with a Babe's Tongue, being only as a little Spark out of these great infinite Wonders.

24. Now understand us thus; the Liberty is, and stands in the Darkness (and inclining to the dark Desire after the Desire of the Light), it attains with the eternal Will the Darkness; and the Darkness reaches after the Light of the Liberty, and cannot attain it; for it encloses itself with the Desire in itself, and makes itself Darkness in itself; and out of both these, viz. out of the dark Impression, and out of the Desire of the Light or Liberty towards the Impression, there is a twinkling [or darting] Flash in the Impression, viz. the Original of the Fire; for the Liberty shines in the Impression, but the Impression in the Anguish comprehends it into itself, and so it is now as a Flash: But seeing the Liberty is incomprehensible, and as a Nothing, and moreover without and before the Impression, and abyssal, therefore the Impression cannot conceive or hold it; but it gives itself into the Liberty, and the Liberty devours its dark Property and Essence, and rules with the assumed Mobility in the Darkness, unapprehensible to the Darkness.

25. Thus understand us right: There is in the Fire a Devouring; the Sharpness of the Fire is from the austere Impression of the Coldness and Bitterness, from the Anguish; and the devouring is from the Liberty, which makes out of the something again a Nothing according to its Property.