13. For it is lamentable, that since the fall of
Adam, we should be so continually cheated and
befooled by the devil, to think that we are not the
children of God, nor of his l essence. He continually putteth the monstrous shape or form into our
thoughts, as he did into our mother Eve, which she
gazed too much upon, and by her representing it
in her imagination, she became a child of this
world, wholly naked and vain, and void of understanding : And so he doth to us also still continually ; he would bring us into another image, as he
did Eve, that we might be ashamed to appear in
the presence of the light and power of God, as
Adam and Eve were, when they hid themselves
behind the trees (that is, behind the monstrous
shape or form), when the Lord appeared in the
centre of the birth of their lives, and said, Where
art thou, Adaml And he said, I am naked, and
am afraid ; which was nothing else, but that his
belief [or faith] and knowledge of the holy God
was put out ; for he beheld the monstrous shape
which he had made to himself by his imagination
and lust, by the devil's [instigation] representation,
and false persuading, to eat of the third Principle
2 destruction wherein 2 corruption was.
4. And now when he saw and knew by that
Ch. 4] OF THE TRUE ETERNAL NATURE 31
which God had told him, that he should die and
perish, if he did eat of the knowledge of good and
evil, it made him continually imagine that he was
2now no more the child of God, and that he was
not created out of God's own essence or substance,
out of the first Principle. He conceived that he
was now but a mere child of this world, when he
beheld his corruptibility, and also the monstrous
image which he l was in ; and that the paradisical l Or carried
2 understanding, delight and joy were departed
from him, so that his spirit and perfection were or sklll>
driven out of paradise (that is, out of the second
Principle of God, where the light or the Heart of
God is generated from eternity to eternity, and
where the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father
and the Son), and that he now lived no more
merely by the Word of God, but did eat and drink,
viz. the 3 birth of his life henceforward consisted in 8 preservation,
. i • i T» • • i i •• i r --I!- i or propagatne third Principle, that is, in the [region J kingdom, tion.
or dominion of the stars and elements, and he must
now eat of the virtue and fruit thereof, and live
thereby : And thereupon he then supposed, that he
was past recovery, and that the noble image of
God was destroyed. And besides, the devil also
continually represented his corruptibility and
mortality to him, and himself could see nothing
else, being he was gone out of paradise, that is, out
of the incorruptible holy 4 geniture [or operation] « preservation,
of God ; wherein he was God's holy image and °l
child, in which God created him to continue therein
332 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 4
for ever. And if the merciful love of God had not
appeared to him again in the centre of the birth of
his life, and comforted him, he would have thought
that he was wholly departed, or quite separated
from the eternal divine birth, and that he was no
more in God, nor God any more in him, and that
he was no more of God's essence. /
5. But the favourable love (that is, the *only
begotten Son of God, or that I may set it down so
that it may be understood, the lovely fountain
2;begotten, or where the light of God is 2 generated) sprang up,
brought forth, and grew again in Adam in the centre of the
birth of his life, in the fifth form of his birth ;
whereby Adam perceived that he was not broken
off from the divine root, but that he was still the
child of God, and repented him of his first evil
lust : And thereupon the Lord shewed him the
Treader upon the Serpent, who should destroy
his monstrous birth ; and so he should from the
monstrous birth be regenerated anew, in the shape,
form, power and virtue of the Treader upon the
Serpent, and be brought with power again into
- paradise, into the holy birth, and eat of the 3Word
of the Lord again, and live eternally, in spite of
4 Or power, all the *gates of the wrathfulness, wherein the
devil liveth ; concerning which there shall be
further mention made in its due place.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.