Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence

34. But now the Scripture says, The devil was a holy angel. And further, it says, You are not a God that wills evil. And in Ezekiel, As sure as I live, I will not the death of a sinner. This is testified by God's earnest severe punishing of the devils, and all sinners, that he is not pleased with death.

35. What then moved the devil to be angry, and evil ? What is the first matter [of it] in him, seeing he was created out of the original eternal spirit? Or from whence is the original of hell, wherein the devils shall remain for ever, when this world, with the stars, and elements, earth, and stones, shall perish in the end ?

36. Beloved Reader, open the eyes of your mind here, and know, that no other [anguish] source will spring up in him [and torment him] than his own

1 Or working , , . - " .

property. quality ; tor that is his hell out of which he is

Ch. 4] OF THE TRUE ETERNAL NATURE 47 created and made ; and the light of God is his eternal shame, and therefore he is God's enemy, because he is no more in the light of God.

37. Now you can here produce nothing more, that God should ever use any matter out of which to create the devil, for then the devil might justify himself, that he made him evil, or of evil matter. For God created him out of nothing, but merely out of his own essence or substance, as well as the other angels. As it is written, Through him, and in him, are all things : And his only is the kingdom, the power, and the glory ; and all in him, as the holy Scripture witnesses. And if it was not thus, no sin would be * imputed to the devil, nor i or accountmen, if they were not eternal, and both in God, and e out of God himself.

38. For to a beast (which is created out of matter) no sin may be imputed, for its spirit reaches not the first Principle ; but it has its original in the third Principle, in the elementary and sidereal kingdom, in the corruptibility, and it reaches not the Deity, as the devil and the soul of man do.

39. And if you cannot believe this, take the holy Scripture before you, which tells you, that when man was fallen into sin, God sent him his own Heart, life, or light, out of himself into the flesh, and opened the gate of the birth of his life, wherein he was united with God ; and being broken off in the light [part] (yet continued in the original

48 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 4 of the first Principle) he has kindled that light, and so united himself to man again.

40. If the soul of a man were not (sprung) out of God the Father out of his first Principle, but out of another matter, he could not have bestowed that highest earnest or pledge of his own heart and light upon him, as himself witnessed, saying, / am ike Light of the world, and the Life of man ; but he could very well have redeemed or helped him some other way.

41. But what do you think that he brought to man into the flesh when he came ? Nothing else but what Adam and our mother Eve had lost in paradise ; the same did the Treader upon the Serpent bring again to the monstrous birth, and delivered man out of that elementary and sidereal house of flesh, and set him again in paradise ; of which I will write at large hereafter.

42. If therefore you will speak or think of God, you must consider that he is all ; and you must look further into the three Principles, wherein you will find what God is, you will find what the wrath, the devil, hell and sin are ; also, what the angels, man and beasts are, and how the separation or variation followed, from whence all things have thus proceeded ; you will find the creation of the world.

43. Only (Reader) I admonish you sincerely, if you be not in the way of the prodigal, or lost son, returning to his Father again, that you leave my

Ch. 4] OF THE TRUE ETERNAL NATURE 49