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

58. The Soul of the poor Sinner is Poisoned in the Anger of God, and the Mercury (understand the eternal Mercury in die eternal Nature) is inflamed in the Soul's Property in the fiery Mars of God's Anger, which does now burn in the eternal Saturn, viz. in the horrible Impression of Darkness, and feels the Sting of the poisonful angry Mars; his Venus is imprisoned in the House of Misery, his Water is dried up, his Jupiter of Understanding is brought into the greatest Folly, his Sun is quenched, and his Moon turned to dark Night.

59. Now he cannot be cured and remedied any other Way, but with the Likeness; he must again appease the mental Mercury; he must take Venus, understand the Love of God, and introduce it into his poisonful Mercury and Mars, and tincture the Mercury in the Soul again with Love, and then his Sun will again shine in the Soul, and his Jupiter will rejoice.

60. Now if thou sayest, that thou canst not, and that thou art too strongly captivated; I say also, that I cannot, for it lies not in my willing, running, and toiling, but it lies in the Compassion of God, for I cannot by my own Strength and Ability overcome the wrathful Anger of God which is enkindled in me; but seeing his dear Heart has freely given itself again out of Love, and in Love, into the Humanity, viz. into the poisonful enkindled Mercury in the Soul, and tinctured the Soul, viz. the Poison-Source of the Eternal Nature in the Eternal Father's Nature's Property, therefore I will cast my Will into his Tincture, and I will go with my Will out of the enkindled Poison-Source, out of the Evil Mercury in God's Anger into his Death, and with my corrupted Will I will die with him in his Death, and become a Nothing in him, and then he must be my Life.

61. For if my Will is a Nothing, then he is in me what he pleases, and then I know not myself any more, but him; and if he will that I shall be something, then let him effect it; but if he wills it not, then I am dead in him, and he lives in me as he pleases, and so then if I be a Nothing, then I am at the End, in the Essence out of which my Father Adam was created; for out of Nothing God has created all Things.

62. The Nothing is the highest Good, for there is no Turba therein, and so nothing can touch [or annoy] my Soul; for I am a Nothing to myself, but I am God's, who knows what I am; I know it not, neither shall [or ought] I to know it.

63. And thus is the Cure of my Soul's Sickness; he that will adventure it with me shall find by Experience what God Will make of him: As for Example, I here write, and I also do not do it, for I, as I, know nothing, and have also not learned or studied it; so then I do it not, but God does it in me as he pleases.

64. I am not known to myself, but I know to him what and how he pleases: Thus I live not to myself, but to him; and thus we are in Christ Only one, as a Tree in many Boughs and Branches, and he begets and brings forth the Fruit in every Branch as he pleases, and thus I have brought his Life into mine, so that I am atoned with him in his Love; for his Will in Christ is entered into the Humanity in me, and now my Will in me enters into his Humanity; and thus, his living Mercury, that is, his Word, viz. the speaking Mercury, tinctures my wrathful Evil Mercury, and transforms it into his. And thus my Mars is become a Love-Fire of God and his Mercury speaks through mine, as through his Instrument, what he pleases; and thus my Jupiter lives in the Divine Joy, and I know it not; the true Sun shines to me, and I See it not; for I live not to myself, I see not to myself, and I know not to myself: I am a Thing, and I know not what; for God knows what I am; and so now I tend and run to and fro as a Thing, in which the Spirit drives [or actuates] me as he pleases; and thus I live according to my inward Will, which yet is not mine.