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

35. All whatever does Lord itself without God's Call and Appointment, the same is from the Devil, and serves the Devil in his own Power and Form: Defend and flatter thyself as much as thou wilt, it does not avail before God; thy own Heart accuses thee that thou art a false Branch; thy Nobility and Highness do not at all avail or help thee in the sight of God, if thou dost not thereby drive in God's Order; thy Office is not thine, but God's; if thou walkest falsely therein, then thy own Judgement is upon thee, and condemns thee to Death; thou art a Servant; and though thou art a King, yet thou servest, and must enter with the Poorest into the new Birth, or else thou shalt not see God.

36. All self-ful assumed [or arrogated] Laws and Authority, wherewith the Poor are vexed and oppressed, do all come from Self-hood, whose Original is in the expressed Form, which has with the Form introduced itself into a Self-hood, and brought itself out quite from God: Whatever does not serve in a Servant's Office before God, the same is all false, let it be either high or low, learned or unlearned: We are altogether Servants of the great God; Nothing brings itself into a Self-fulness, unless it be born in God's Anger in the Impression of Nature: And though a Christian possesses an Own-hood, which is not false, yet he is only but a Servant therein, viz. a Distributer for his Master, a steward and overseer of his Master's Work: He deals for his Master therein, and not for his Self-hood only; all whatever he plots and devises to bring into Self-hood, and brings it, that he brings into the anxious Cabinet of Covetousness, Envy, and self-ful Pleasure of the Flesh, viz. into a Vessel that is separated from God, viz. into the Impression of Nature, and steals from his Lord and Master who has set him up for a Steward; he is a sacrilegious Person, let him excuse himself, and pretend what he pleases.

37. A true Christian acknowledges himself for a Servant of God, to whom it is given in charge to deal right with God's Works. He is not his own, for he is also not at Home in this earthly Work of this Tabernacle: Let him seek, search, plant and build, traffic and trade; and whatever else he does, he must always know that he does it to God, and shall give an Account thereof, and that he is a Stranger and Servant in this Work, and serves his Master; and not at all look upon the course of his Forefathers who have walked therein in the Pleasure of the earthly Life; whoever does so is far from the Kingdom of God, and can with no Conscience and Ground call himself [or think himself to be] a Christian; for he stands only in the Form of Christianity, and not in the Spirit of Christ; the Form shall be destroyed, and cease with Time, but the Spirit remains steadfast for ever.

38. A true Christian is in the Spirit a Christian, and in continual Exercise to bring forth its own Form, not only with Words in Sound and shew, but in the Power of the Work, as a visible palpable Form, not weening, conjecturing, and giving good Words out of the self-ful Self-hood, and yet remaining in Self-hood; but a Dying to Self-hood, and a Growing forth in the Will of God in the Love-Self-hood as a Servant of God in God's Deeds of Wonder; a helping to strike his Instrument in God's Will, and be a true sounding String in God's harmonious Concert; a continual making Word in God's Voice, viz. in the Verbum Fiat, which makes and works in and with God what God makes, forms, and works, as an Instrument of God.