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

44. So likewise God dwells in all Things, and the Thing knows nothing of God; he likewise is not manifest to the Thing, and yet it receives Power from him, but it receives the Power according to its Property from him, either from his Love, or from his Wrath; and from which it receives, so it has its Signature externally; and the Good is also in it, but as it were wholly shut up [or hidden] to the Iniquity [or Evil;] an Example of which you have in Bushes, and other thorny and pricking Briars, out of which notwithstanding a fair well-smelling Blossom grows; and there lie two Properties therein, viz. a pleasant and unpleasant; which overcomes, that shapes [Forms or marks] the Fruit.

45. Thus also it is with Man; he was created a fair Blossom and Fruit of Paradise, but the Devil raised up in him his thorny Property by the Serpent, understand the Center, the Property of the wrathful Nature, which in his paradisical Source was not manifest in him; but when his Hunger entered into the thorny false Property of the Serpent, viz. into Death, then the Property of Death, and the false Serpent in the Devil's Desire, pressed into his Hunger, and filled Soul and Body, so that the Hunger of the false Serpent began effectually to Work in him, and Death awaked in him, and then Paradise hid itself in him: For Paradise entered into itself, and the Poison of the Serpent in Death's Property dwelt also in itself; here was now the Enmity; then said God to him, The Seed of the Woman shall bruise the Serpent's Head, and thou shalt Sting the Heel with Death's Poison.

46. Understand the paradisical Image which is shut up, and captivated in the wrathful Death, in which the Word of the Deity, viz. the divine Mercury ruled and wrought, did disappear; as the Gold is disappeared in Saturn, so that nothing is seen but a contemptible Matter, till the right Artist sets upon it, and again awakens the Mercury in the inclosed Gold, and then the dead inclosed Body of the Gold does again revive in Saturn; for Mercury is its Life, who must be introduced into it again, and then the dead Body of the Gold appears, and overcomes the gross Saturn, wherein it lay shut up, and changes its mean contemptible old Body into a fair glorious golden Body.

47. Thus likewise it is with Man; he lies now shut up after his Fall in a gross, deformed, bestial dead Image; he is not like an Angel, much less like unto Paradise; he is as the gross Ore in Saturn, wherein the Gold is couched and shut up; his paradisical Image is in him as if it were not, and it is also not manifest, the outward Body is a stinking Carcass, while it yet lives in the Poison: He is a bad thorny Bush, from whence notwithstanding fair Rose-Buds may bloom forth, and grow out of the Thorns, and manifest that which lies hidden, and shut up in the wrathful poisonful Mercury, till the Artist who has made him takes him in Hand, and brings the living Mercury into his Gold or paradisical Image disappeared and shut up in Death; so that the inclosed Image, which was created out of the divine Meekness and Love-Essentiality, may again bud and spring forth in the divine Mercury, viz. in the Word of the Deity, which entered into the Humanity shut up [and closed in the Death and Curse.]

48. And then the divine Mercury changes the wrathful Mercury into its Property, and Christ is born, who bruises the Head of the Serpent, viz. of the Poison and Death in the Anger of God, understand the Might of wrathful Death; and a new Man arises in Holiness and Righteousness, which lives before God, [and his divine Image] appears and puts forth its Lustre as the hidden Gold out of the earthly Property: And hereby it is clearly signified to the Artist chosen of God how he shall seek; no otherwise than as he has sought and found himself in the Property of the pure Gold; and so likewise is this Process, and not a whit otherwise; for Man and the Earth with its Secrets lie shut up in the like [or same] Curse and Death, and need one and the same Restitution.