The Signature of All Things — trans. John Ellistone (1651)
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The translator’s English as printed (John Ellistone). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
9. All Sins arise from Self; for the Self-hood forces itself with the Desire into its self-fulness; it makes itself Covetousness and Envy, it draws in its own Desire strange Essence into itself, and makes the Possessor of the strange Essence also an Enemy against itself, so that Sin is wrought with Sin, Vileness with Vileness, and all run confusedly in and among one another, as a mere Abomination before the eternal Mother.
10. In like Manner also we are to consider of the regenerate Will, which goes out of its Selfishness or Self-hood again into the Resignation; the same becomes also an Enemy and an Abominate to Self-hood; as Sickness is an Enemy to health, and on the contrary, health an Enemy to Sickness: Thus the resigned Will, and also the Self-Will are a continual Enmity, and an incessant lasting war and combat.
11. Self-Will seeks only what serves to its Self-hood; and the resigned Will is not at all careful, but brings its Desire only into its eternal Mother, that it Might be one with her: It will be a Nothing, that the Mother might be alone all in it. Self-Will says to the resigned Will, Thou art foolish, in that thou givest thyself to Death, and yet Mightest well live gloriously in me; but the resigned Will says, Thou art my Abomination, Pain, and Enmity, and bringest me out of Eternity into a Time only into perplexity and misery; thou Plaguest me a while, and then thou givest my Body to the Earth, and the Soul to Hell.
12. True real Resignation is the Mortification of the Abominate against God; he that wholly forsakes his Self-hood, and gives himself up with Mind and Desire, Senses and Will, into God's Mercy, into the Dying of Jesus Christ, he is dead to the earthly World with the Will, and is a twofold Man; where the Abominate Works only in itself to Death, but the resigned Will lives in Christ's Death, and rises up continually in Christ's Resurrection in God: And though the Self-Desire Sins, which indeed can do Nothing else but Sin, yet the resigned Will lives not in Sin, for it is mortified to the Desire of Sin, and lives through Christ in God in the Land of the Living; but Self-hood lives in the Land of Death, viz. in the continual Dying, in the continual Enmity against God.
13. The earthly Man is the Curse of God, and is an Abominate before God's Holiness; he can do Nothing else but seek his Selfhood, for he is in the Wrath of God: And though he does some Thing that is good, yet he does it not from his own Self-Will, but the Will resigned in God compels him that he must do what his Self would not willingly do: And now if he does it, he does it as an Instrument of the resigned Will, not from his own Desire, but from God's Will, which guides the resigned Will in the Desire as an Instrument.
14. Therefore now whoever Will see the Kingdom of God, and attain thereunto, he must educe [or bring forth] his Soul out of Self-hood, out of the earthly Desire, as the Physician brings forth the Cure of the Disease from the painful [tormenting] Desire, and introduces it into a Love-Desire; and then the Cure also brings forth the Sickness in the Body out of the painful Desire, and sets it into a Love-Desire: Sickness becomes the Servant of the Physic; and so likewise the evil earthly Will, when the Soul's Will is cured, is the resigned Will's Servant.
15. The elemental and siderial Man must only be the Instrument wherewith Man's Soul labours in the resigned Will; for thereto God has also created it; but the Soul has made and set up itself in Adam for Lord and Master, and is entered into his Prison, and given its Will thereinto; but if it will be acknowledged for God's Child, then it must again die to the same, and be wholly mortified to the earthly Self-hood and Desire in God's Will in Christ's Death, and be wholly regenerated anew in God's Will, and deprive the earthly Will in Self-hood of its Power, and rule over it, and guide it in Subjection and Command, as a Master does his Instrument, and then Self-hood loses the Power and Prevalence, and the Lust of Self-hood arises as a continual longing; Self-hood does then continually long after the Forms of its own Life, viz. after Self-Glory, and after earthly Abundance, also after Envy and Anger, whether it may be able to attain that Abundance; and also after the cunning Lyes of Falsehood: These are the vital Forms of the earthly Self-hood.