Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence

God made thee a degree higher ? Art them not a child of Eve ? Prithee tell me the truth, Art thou not the Antichrist, which under a cloak [of being counted the minister and servant of God] ridest upon the devil's horse ? Methinks I see thee. Hearken ! When thou wentest out of paradise into this world, wherefore didst thou not continue in one [only] love? Wherefore didst thou not rejoice in thy neighbour ? Wherefore didst thou not love the members of thy body ? Why dost thou not adorn thy brother with thy ornament? Didst thou not see him plainly ? Was not the earth thy own ? Thou mightest have made what thou wouldst of it. Who did hinder thee in it? Why didst thou not eat with thy brother ? Thou mightest have had fully enough ; there would never have been any want. If thy humility towards thy brother had continued, then his also had continued towards thee. And then what a fine habitation and dwelling had there been upon earth. What need had there been for thee to have coined silver and gold, if unity had continued? Thou mightest have made thy ornaments of it well enough ; if thou hadst adorned thy brother and sister, then they would have adorned thee again with their ready serviceable love. Dost thou think it had been a sin, if thou hadst gone in pure silk and gold, for the benefit of thy brother, and to the honour of the great God ?

18. 0 thou blind Babel \ I must tell thee, how

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thou becamest thus mad ; thou hast suffered thyself to be possessed by the region of the stars, and to be led by the abominable devil, and art become a perjured [or forsworn] whore to God, and nevertheless, thou hast built thyself a kingdom upon earth ; 1 the stars as l they lead their region, thou leadest thine ; as they order their .

government generate by the elements, and consume it again, so dost thou with thy children also ; thou generatest them and killest them again ; thou makest war, and art a murderer for thy pride and covetousness sake, so that thou hast no room at all upon the earth.

19. Dost thou suppose that God taketh pleasure in it ? Yes, the spirit of the great world is pleased with it ; and through that spirit the fierce anger of God [is also pleased], because they qualify [or mingle] one with another, and out of one and the same root.

20. Dost thou suppose that all the Prophets have spoken from the pleasant kind love of God, from the Heart of God, when they said to the kings of Israel, Enter into battle, thou shalt overcome, God shall give you victory ? Indeed they spake from God, but from his fierce wrath against sins, through the spirit of the great world, which would devour again what it hath made, because the love was extinguished.

21. Or dost thou suppose that God sent Moses to slay the kings of the heathen in the Promised Land, and that he is so well pleased with murderCh. 20]p. 511

ings ? No, friend, look under the veil of Moses, and thou shall find it quite otherwise.

22. Why did God keep Israel forty years in the wilderness, and fed them with * heavenly bread ? J manna. That they should be a people full of love, such as love one another, and should depend on God in one love ; and therefore he gave their laws brightness [or clarity], to see if they could live in the love of the Father, and then he would have sent them among the heathen, to turn them with their wonders ; as was done at the time of the Apostles. And in that he fed them from the ^heaven, and that none of them (which gathered much or little) had any want; thereby they ought to have known, that the kingdom [the power and all] is God's, and that they were in him ; they ought to have left their covetousness, and to converse among one another with brotherly love, none ought to look after covetousness, because he horribly punished 2it. > covetous23. Also when the heathen should hear, that nes8' God would send this people, which he had brought out of Egypt with great wonders [or miracles], among them to destroy them, that they should turn to God, and depart from covetousness, and enter into brotherly love, therefore he gave 3 them 3 the heathen. a long time of respite ; as also to Israel (whom he fed from heaven) for an example, that one people should be an example to the other, that there is a God that is almighty. But they being earthly,