it indeed makes devout shows of holiness to God, and gives good words, but the man, with his senses and reason, will not forsake the world, and return again to the ark. They build themselves stately palaces without the ark, for the pleasure of the flesh, and are very zealous and devout in hypocrisy without the ark; they will be accounted children by an external imputation of grace and adoption; but they will not enter into the ark, but they say, Christ is in the ark, he has purchased and paid all, we need only to comfort ourselves therewith, he will bring us in well enough.
46. The other party says they have Christ in their works of hypocrisy, they take the ark along with them when they fly out in their fleshly pleasure. All these remain without the ark in this world, and return not to the ark. This the third dove denotes: for the Antichristian kingdom walks demurely in the shape of a dove, and as a sheep, but it is only a figure [and darksome shadow] of Christ's kingdom, which consists in the spirit in power, and is really in the ark.
The Thirty-Third Chapter
Of the beginning of the Second monarchy, and of the Covenant of God with Noah, and all Creatures
1. AND Moses says, Then God spoke with Noah, and commanded him to go forth, with every living thing, each with its kind. But Noah built an altar unto the Lord, and took every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings upon the altar. And the Lord smelted a sweet savour, and said in his heart, I will not henceforth curse the earth any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will not any more smite every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease (Gen. viii. 16 et seq.).
Moses says that God smelled a sweet savour, and said in his heart, he would not again curse the earth, or smite every living creature any more for man's sake. This is a figure or mystical type, as is before mentioned in the offering of Abel.
2. For his heart is the Word in the Covenant, which took the prayer and will-spirit of Noah through the holy fire in the offering, and brought it in the Word to substance; and withal smelled, in the divine power, the humanity of Christ, who was to resign himself in the Covenant into the Word of power;
that is, it desired to have the humanity in his power and virtue, as a pleasant savour; and from this smell [or sweet savour of holy rest in the paradisical property] the spirit of God declared that he would not again destroy man and the creatures any more; so long as the earth should endure, these creatures should also continue.
3. For Noah offered all manner of clean beasts and fowl; and the spirit says that God smelled herein a sweet savour [of rest] . Now [Moses does not mean] that God took pleasure in the smell or savour of the offering, for all beasts are in his power, and are continually before him;
but Moses spoke it in reference to the hidden offering in the Covenant, which the inward world in the creatures did smell, which hereafter would deliver them from the abomination of vanity by its own peculiar offering, 1 and set their figure into the holy wisdom, viz. into the spiritual world.
1 That is, the inward central fire, which shall purge the floor, and crystallise the earth into transparent gold.
it indeed makes devout shows of holiness to God, and gives good words, but the man, with his senses and reason, will not forsake the world, and return again to the ark. They build themselves stately palaces without the ark, for the pleasure of the flesh, and are very zealous and devout in hypocrisy without the ark; they will be accounted children by an external imputation of grace and adoption; but they will not enter into the ark, but they say, Christ is in the ark, he has purchased and paid all, we need only to comfort ourselves therewith, he will bring us in well enough.
46. The other party says they have Christ in their works of hypocrisy, they take the ark along with them when they fly out in their fleshly pleasure. All these remain without the ark in this world, and return not to the ark. This the third dove denotes: for the Antichristian kingdom walks demurely in the shape of a dove, and as a sheep, but it is only a figure [and darksome shadow] of Christ's kingdom, which consists in the spirit in power, and is really in the ark.
The Thirty-Third Chapter
Of the beginning of the Second monarchy, and of the Covenant of God with Noah, and all Creatures
1. AND Moses says, Then God spoke with Noah, and commanded him to go forth, with every living thing, each with its kind. But Noah built an altar unto the Lord, and took every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings upon the altar. And the Lord smelted a sweet savour, and said in his heart, I will not henceforth curse the earth any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will not any more smite every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease (Gen. viii. 16 et seq.).
Moses says that God smelled a sweet savour, and said in his heart, he would not again curse the earth, or smite every living creature any more for man's sake. This is a figure or mystical type, as is before mentioned in the offering of Abel.
2. For his heart is the Word in the Covenant, which took the prayer and will-spirit of Noah through the holy fire in the offering, and brought it in the Word to substance; and withal smelled, in the divine power, the humanity of Christ, who was to resign himself in the Covenant into the Word of power;
that is, it desired to have the humanity in his power and virtue, as a pleasant savour; and from this smell [or sweet savour of holy rest in the paradisical property] the spirit of God declared that he would not again destroy man and the creatures any more; so long as the earth should endure, these creatures should also continue.
3. For Noah offered all manner of clean beasts and fowl; and the spirit says that God smelled herein a sweet savour [of rest] . Now [Moses does not mean] that God took pleasure in the smell or savour of the offering, for all beasts are in his power, and are continually before him;
but Moses spoke it in reference to the hidden offering in the Covenant, which the inward world in the creatures did smell, which hereafter would deliver them from the abomination of vanity by its own peculiar offering, 1 and set their figure into the holy wisdom, viz. into the spiritual world.
1 That is, the inward central fire, which shall purge the floor, and crystallise the earth into transparent gold.
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