Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence

book, and read it not, it will do you harm. For the l great prince will not forbear to deceive you ; 1 Satan because he stands naked in this book before the children of God, and is exceedingly ashamed, as a man that is put to open shame before all people for his misdeeds ; therefore be warned. And if you love and favour the tender delicate flesh still, do not read my book ; but if you will not take warning, and a mischief befall you, I will be guiltless, blame nobody but yourself; for I write down what I know at present, for a Memorial to myself; yet God knows well what he will do [with it], which in some measure is hidden from me.

44. Seeing now that we can find nothing in all nature, of which we may say, This is God, or here is God, from whence we might conclude, that God might be some strange thing ; and seeing himself witnesses, that his is the kingdom and the power from eternity to eternity ; and that he calls himself Father, (and the Son is begotten out of the loins of his Father), therefore we must seek for him in the original, 2in the Principle out of which the world was generated and created in the beginning ; and we can say no otherwise, but that the first Principle is God the Father himself.

45. Yet there is found in the original the most horrible and [fierce or] strong birth, viz. the harshness, bitterness, and fire ; of which we cannot say, that it is God ; and yet it is the most inward first

p. 4

50 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 4

1 well-spring 1 source of all that is in God the Father ; according to which, he calls himself, an angry, zealous [or jealous] God. And this source (as you find before in the first three chapters concerning the original of the eternal birth) is the first Principle, and that is God the Father in his originality, out of which this world has its beginning.

46. But the angels and the devils, as also the

2 AS before, soul of man, are merely and purely 2 out of the same spirit. The devils and the angels, in the * their being time of 8 their bodifying, continued therein ; and made corpo- . « 7 , .

real, con- the soul of man, in the time of the creating of the tinned in the _. n * * • » i •• r\ spiritual body, [isj breathed in from the spirit 01 God, in substance. 1 /• i i • i w» • • i i

4 Or one *ne ro°t of the third Principle, and now continues therein, in eternity, inseparably and immovably in the eternal substance or essence of God. And as little as the pure eternal birth and the indissoluble band of the Father ends or vanishes, so little also will such a spirit have an end.

47. Yet in this Principle there is nothing else but the most horrible begetting, the greatest anguish and hostile quickening, like a brimstonespirit, and is ever the gate of hell, and the abyss wherein prince Lucifer (at the extinguishing of his light) continued ; and wherein (viz. in the same abyss of hell) the soul continues, which is separated from the second Principle, and whose light ([which shines] from the Heart of God) is extinguished, and for which cause also, at the end of this time, there will be a separation or parting

Ch. 4] OF THE TRUE ETERNAL NATURE 51 asunder of the saints of light from the damned, whose * source will be without the light of God. l Or working

. fountain of

48. Now we have shown you the first Principle, their condi-

/• i • i 11 i • 1*1-1 . •• i tions as a boilOUt oi which all things take their beginning ; and ing springing must speak so of it, as if there were a place, or a separable essence, where there is such a kind of source ; to the end that the first Principle might be understood, so that the eternity, as also the anger of God, sin, eternal death, the darkness (which is so called in respect of the extinguishment of the light), also hell-fire, and the devil, might be known and understood [what they are].

49. So I will now write of the second Principle, of the clear pure Deity, of the 2 Heart of God. In 2 That is, the the first Principle (as I have mentioned above) or lustre of

,11 . . T r> i i the Father.