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.
22. Now all this is twofold, viz. the Desire makes in itself in its Impression the Darkness, wherein is the strong Might of the Enkindling of Nature, and it is painful; and the free Lubet to the Desire makes in itself through the Enkindling of the Desire Light and pleasing Motion; the Light is the Power and Lustre, and the Element is its Body, or Essence; whereas yet it is only spiritual: Thus the Fire-Desire is a Joyfulness in the free Lubet, and in the Darkness it is an aching painful Source.
23. Out of this whole Essence Man was created to the Image of God, and understand us right, he stood after and in the Creation in the Dominion of the Element; the Mercurial Wheel in Sulphur stood in the Light, and in the free Lubet of Eternity; but he departed further with his Desire into the four Elements, viz. into the Centre of Darkness, from whence Heat and cold arise.
24. His Desire in the Beginning was bent [inclined] into the Liberty of God, viz. into the Element, where he was resigned in God; and then God's Love-Will ruled him with the free Lubet's Property, but he departed out of the free Lubet of God, out of the Resignation into a Self-Will, which he forged in the Centre to Nature, from whence the Pain and Torture arise, viz. Heat and cold, so also Astringency, sour Bitterness, and all the Properties of the dark Impression.
25. Even there he fell into the eternal Death, viz. into the Dying Source, in which the Mercurial Life in the Sulphur rules in the Poison, where one Form in the Mercurial sphere does Envy, hate, annoy, and destroy the other, where there is meer Anguish, Aking, Tormenting, and Enmity; for the free Lubet was quenched in him, wherein the holy Element, viz. the divine Body consists, and there arose in the same pure Element the four Elements of the outward Source; there the Image of God was cursed, which is Nothing else but that God's Love-Will, which ruled in the Image of his Likeness, withdrew from Man, and so Man fell into the Dominion of Nature: And seeing the four Elements have a temporal Beginning and End, and must again enter into the End, therefore also the human Body, which is now become wholly earthly in the four Elements, must fall again into the four Elements, and be destroyed therein: And therefore now we are to consider of his Cure and Restoration, how he may again be delivered from Death, and be again introduced with the Body into the pure Element, and with the Spirit into the Dominion of God's Will.
26. Now there is no other Remedy but that he with the Spirit which arises in the Chaos, and was inspired by God's Will-Spirit into the created Image, does again depart out of his Self-hood, viz. out of his natural Will, and resign himself up fully and freely into the first Will, which in the Beginning formed him into an Image: He must wholly die to his Self-hood in himself in the Death of the dark Impression (as far as he lives therein to his own Will in the Self-Desire of the outward Life of the four Elements) and cast himself with total Resignation into God's Will, viz. into God's Mercy, that he may no longer live and will to himself, but to God, viz. to the first Will of God, which created him in its Image, whereby God manifested himself in an Image; and so he is with the first Astrum, viz. with the Chaos of the Soul, again in the same comprehension wherein God created him to his Image.