Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence

Ch. 23] THE PRECIOUS TESTAMENTS OF CHRIST 635

how then can he be in this world? And when thou reachest furthest, thou thinkest that he is present only with his Holy Spirit, here in his Testaments, and that the Testaments are only 1 signs of his merits. What sayest thou then of 1 symbols of his satififacthy new man ? When indeed the soul is fed with tion.

the Holy Ghost, what [food] hath thy new man then? 2 For each life feedeth upon its mother. 2Thenewman

. feedeth upon

7. Now if the soul eateth of the clear Deity, the pure «iemeat, and the what ffoodl hath the body then ? * or thou outward man eateth of the knowest that the soul and the body are not one four elements. and the same thing ; it is indeed a Tveryl 3 body, 3 Corpus, and

3 . . they differ as but the soul is a spirit, and must have spiritual body and food, and the body must have bodily food. Or wilt thou give the new man earthly food ? If thou meanest so, thou art yet far from the kingdom of God. The heavenly body of Christ did eat no earthly food, but the outward body only did eat that. Is not Christ's body now in the 4 holy Ternary, * the pure

1111 holy substanand eateth paradisical food ? Wherefore then shall tiaiity, viz.

the angelical not our new man do so ? Did he not eat heavenly world, the

11 /• n°ly earth.

food forty days in the wilderness, and always afterwards ? And did he not tell his disciples at Jacob's well, / have meat to eat that ye know not of-, and \ further, It is my meat to do the will of my Father which is in heaven \ Is the will of God his food, why then is it not ours, if we live in him ? Hath not the Deity of Christ put on the kingdom of heaven for a body? Is not the pure element (wherein the Deity dwelleth) his body?

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8. But reason saith, The body of Christ is but in one place, how can he then be everywhere ? He is indeed a creature, and a creature cannot be in all places at once. Hearken, beloved reason : When the Word became man in the body of Mary, was he not at that time also aloft above the stars ? When he was at Nazareth, was he not then also at Jerusalem, and everywhere in all the thrones [of heaven] ? Or dost thou suppose, when God became man, that he was shut up and confined within the humanity, and was not everywhere ? Dost thou suppose, that the Deity (in Christ's becoming man) divided itself ? 0 no ; he never went from his place, that cannot be.

9. And now he is become man, therefore his humanity is everywhere, wheresoever his Deity was ; for thou canst not say, that there is any place in heaven or in this world, where God is not ; now wheresoever the Father is, there also is his Heart in him, and there also is the Holy Ghost. Now his Heart is become man, and in the humanity of Christ ; and therefore if you will think, that the body of Christ is far off in heaven, yet you must also say, that the Heart of God is in him ; and now (when you say that God the Father is here present) will you say, that the Heart in him is not here present with him ? Or wilt thou divide the Heart of God, and wilt only make it, that there is but a spark of it in the body of Christ, and that the rest of it is everywhere all over? What do you do1?

Ch. 23] THE PRECIOUS TESTAMENTS OF CHRIST 637

Desist, and I will truly and exactly shew you the true ground.

10. Behold, God the Father is everywhere, and his l Heart and light is everywhere in the Father, 1 Or Son. for it is always from eternity begotten everywhere of the Father, and his birth hath neither beginning nor end, he is even at this very day continually generated of the Father ; and then also when he was in the body of Mary, yet he stood in the Father's birth, and was continually begotten of the Father, and the Holy Ghost proceeded continually from eternity, from the Father through his 2 Heart; 2 Son or for the whole 3 generation of the Deity is no otheror