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.
65. But yet I find in me another Life, which I am, not according to the Resignation [or Self-denial,] but according to the Creature of this World, viz. according to the Similitude of Eternity; this Life does yet stand in Poison and Strife, and shall yet be turned to Nothing, and then I am wholly perfect: Now in this same Life, wherein yet I find my Self-hood, is Sin and Death, and these likewise shall be brought to Nothing. In that Life, which God is in me, I hate Sin and Death, and according to that Life which yet is in my Self-hood, I hate the Nothing, viz. the Deity: Thus one Life fights against the other, and there is a continual Contest in me; but seeing Christ is born again in me, and lives in my Nothingness, therefore Christ will, according to his Promise made in Paradise, bruise the Head of the Serpent, viz. of my Self-hood, and mortify the Evil Man in myself, so that he himself may truly live [in me.]
66. But what shall Christ do with the Evil Man? Shall he cast him away? No. For he is in Heaven, and does thereby accomplish and effect his Wonders in this World, which stands in the Curse: Now each labours in its own [Vineyard;] the outward Man labours in the Cursed World, which is Evil and Good in the Wonders of God, viz. in the Mirror of Glory, which yet shall be revealed in him; and the inward Man is not its own, but God's Instrument, with whom God makes what he pleases, till the outward with its Wonders in the Mirror shall also be manifest in God; and even then is God all in all, and he alone in his Wisdom and Deeds of Wonder and nothing else besides; and this is the Beginning and the End, Eternity and Time.
67. Now understand it right; to the outward Man there belongs a Cure from the outward, viz. from the outward Will of God, who has made himself external with this visible World; and for the inward Man there is a Cure from the inward World, in which God is all in all; only one, not many, one in all, and all in one: But if the inward penetrates the outward, and illustrates it with its Sunshine, and the outward receives the Sunshine of the inward, then it is tinctured, cured, and healed by the inward, and the inward illustrates it, as the Sun shines through the Water, or as the Fire sets the Iron quite through of a Light Glee; here now needs no other Cure.
68. But seeing the Devil in the Wrath of the eternal Nature opposes the Soul, as an Enemy of the Soul, and continually casts his poisonful Imagination at the Soul to tempt and try it, and the Anger or Wrath of the eternal Nature is manifest in the outward Man, which Adam awakened and stirred up; thereupon this Wrath is oftentimes stirred up by the Devil and his Servants, that it effectually Works and burns in the outward Body, and even then the inward Love-Fire goes out in the outward Man, as a red hot Iron is quenched in the Water; yet not so soon in the internal, but in the external [Man,] unless the outward Man continues lying in the Mire of Sin; so that the Soul, which had given itself into the Nothing, viz. into the Liberty, into the Life of God, does enter again with its Desire into the outward sinful Man, then it loses the inward Sun, for it goes again out of the Nothing into the Something, viz. into the Source.
69. Thus the outward Body must then have an outward Cure; and though the inward Man yet lives in God, yet whereas the Soul has imagined into the outward Wrath, so that the divine Tincturation is no longer in the outward Man, the outward Mercury, viz. the expressed Word, must have a Tincturation from the outward expressed Love and Light, unless the Will-Spirit of the Soul does wholly re-enter into the inward hidden Man and be again transmuted; and then the Cure may be again introduced into the outward Man, being the thorough-shining Love of God in the Light, which is exceeding precious.
70. But now this Herb is rarely to be found upon the Earth; for Men eat only of the forbidden Tree; therefore the Poison of the Serpent does so spring up in them in the Wrath of the eternal and external Nature, so that they must also have an external Cure, for their Serpent's Poison in the outward Mercury.
71. It is indeed possible for a Man to live without Sickness, but he must bring the divine Tincturation from the inward Man through the outward, which is very difficult [to do] in the World; for the outward Man lives among the Thorns of God's Wrath, which Gall and Sting him on every Side, and blow up the Wrath of God, so that it burns in the outward Man, and then the Tincturation of God's Love may not continue there: It is indeed there, but not in the outward enkindled Abominations, but it dwells in itself, like as the Light dwells in the Darkness, and the Darkness comprehends it not, also knows nothing of it; but when the Light is manifest in the Darkness, then is the Night changed into Day.