Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence

44. But in the new man (which we attract on to our souls in the bosom of the virgin) we shall spring and flourish again ; and therein is no necessity nor death, for the kingdom of this world passeth away. Therefore he that hath not thisp. 606 image in the new birth, shall, in the restoration of the spirit of the eternal nature, have the image of what his heart and confidence hath been set upon here [put upon him] ; for every kingdom imageth (or figureth] its creatures, according to the essences which were grown here in their will.

45. And that you may rightly and properly understand us ; we [mean or] understand here no strange Christ, who is not our brother ; as himself said, at his resurrection, Go to my brethren, and your brethren, and tell them, I go to my God and to your God. As indeed the body (which we here carry about us) is not the image of God, which God created ; for the kingdom of this world put its image upon us, when Adam consented to yield to it ; and we (if we be regenerated) are not at home in this world with our new man ; as Christ said to his disciples, / have called you out of this world, that you shall be where I am ; and St Paul saith, Our conversation (as to the new man) is in heaven. Thus we understand also, that our Immanuel, [who is] the most holy of all, with his true image of God (wherein also our true image of God doth consist) is not of this world ; but as the old mortal man (from the kingdom of this world) hangeth to us, so our mortal man also hung to the image of God in Christ, which he drew from his mother Mary, as the pure element [draweth] the kingdom of this world [to it].

46. But now we must not think, that the holy

Ch. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 607

man in Christ died, for that dieth not ; but the mortal [man] from the kingdom of this world [is that which die.th] ; that [was it which] cried (on the cross) My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? And we see very clearly the great might [and power] of the holy man in Christ, when the mortal (which was taken from this world) went into death, how the holy almighty [man] wrestled with death, insomuch that the elements did shake with it, and the sun (which is the light of the nature of this world) lost its splendour, as if it were then to perish ; and then the living Champion in Christ fought with the anger, and stood in the hell of the anger of God, and loosed the soul (which he commended into his Father's hands) quite off from the anger of God, also from the source [or torment] of hell ; and this was that which David said, Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor permit thy holy [one'] to 1 perish. 1 rot, consume,

47. The Deity was in the human soul, and°r here it brake the sword of the Cherubim ; so that as Adam had brought his soul into the prison of anger, and so afterwards all souls from Adam are generated such, and are all of them, as in one root, imprisoned in the anger of death, till Christ ; so the noble Champion Christ here destroyed death in the human soul, and brought the soul through death into his eternal new humanity, and put it into an eternal 2 covenant. 'contract,

48. And as Adam had opened the gate of the marriage'. °r