16. You potentate in God's office! Do you not know that in your office you are a branch in the tree of Christ, and that fruit should grow upon your twigs? Now if you withdraw your sap from the twigs, and with your rubbing break them off, what fruit can they bear to you? They must need wither in you, and bring forth no fruit: of which you are guilty, that the branch, you being in God's office, stands without fruit. What do you profit your Lord who has planted you? shall you not be hewn down, and cast into the fire (Matt. iii. 10; Luke iii. 9) of God's anger, as a dry piece of wood? Are you not the Great Tree in the field of the world, standing in your twigs without fruit? What fruit do you bear? Nothing but leaves, which fall off by the wind, and rot and go to the earth again without fruit. And now what profit to life is a tree without fruit?
No other but for the fire, or for the building of a habitation.
17. Thus also you are only in your office a building and habitation, wherein God's children are to dwell; but they grow not out of your stock, you are only an officer of or belonging unto a constellation and asterism, and serve the kingdom of separation in evil and good: as that pulls down and builds up, so do you also. What one officer builds up, another tears down to the ground. But he that serves in Christ's spirit in this office, he works with Joseph: the blessing is everywhere in his office, so that his twigs bring forth much fruit in Christ's kingdom.
18. You nobles and potentates under the name of Christ; whence comes it to you in Christ's kingdom that you are such, under a Christian name? Your office is God's; if you govern therein as a Joseph, as a minister of Christ, then it is right and pleasing to God. But whence comes it in the kingdom of Christ that there is nobility and slavery? Is not that heathenish? Wherein stands the ground thereof?
It proceeds from nothing else but from the pride of the devil, and self will.
19. Who planted you in the beginning? Your princes and kings, whom you have served: to what end are they? That pride might be arrayed in brave apparel, and that men might not say of the high offices of God, They are clothed with common apparel; but that they might be distinguished from the lowly and simple: and that was even Lucifer's fall.
20. But Christ on earth had not whereon to lay his head (Matt. viii. 20), neither house, nor anything else. So also a Christian has nothing for his own, but what he has, he has it for his office sake, and serves his Lord therein; but he that serves otherwise, he serves the Adamical self and not Christ; and is no Christian, but a mere titulary Christian. But he is a child of nature, of the kingdom of this world, in whose inward ground hell stands, and serves the kingdom of darkness: outwardly he serves indeed the type of God according to love and anger, where all things together stand in strife, till the day of separation, and the restoration of that which was before such doings.
21. For in this world all goes on in free will, that which has no law has also no judgement; but that which has a law, that has its judgement in itself: therefore seeing man, especially a Christian, has a law, viz. that he is no more his own, in that he is given up to another, viz. to Christ, and yet will not be subject to him, then is the judgment in the law, and condemns the own will and self.
16. You potentate in God's office! Do you not know that in your office you are a branch in the tree of Christ, and that fruit should grow upon your twigs? Now if you withdraw your sap from the twigs, and with your rubbing break them off, what fruit can they bear to you? They must need wither in you, and bring forth no fruit: of which you are guilty, that the branch, you being in God's office, stands without fruit. What do you profit your Lord who has planted you? shall you not be hewn down, and cast into the fire (Matt. iii. 10; Luke iii. 9) of God's anger, as a dry piece of wood? Are you not the Great Tree in the field of the world, standing in your twigs without fruit? What fruit do you bear? Nothing but leaves, which fall off by the wind, and rot and go to the earth again without fruit. And now what profit to life is a tree without fruit?
No other but for the fire, or for the building of a habitation.
17. Thus also you are only in your office a building and habitation, wherein God's children are to dwell; but they grow not out of your stock, you are only an officer of or belonging unto a constellation and asterism, and serve the kingdom of separation in evil and good: as that pulls down and builds up, so do you also. What one officer builds up, another tears down to the ground. But he that serves in Christ's spirit in this office, he works with Joseph: the blessing is everywhere in his office, so that his twigs bring forth much fruit in Christ's kingdom.
18. You nobles and potentates under the name of Christ; whence comes it to you in Christ's kingdom that you are such, under a Christian name? Your office is God's; if you govern therein as a Joseph, as a minister of Christ, then it is right and pleasing to God. But whence comes it in the kingdom of Christ that there is nobility and slavery? Is not that heathenish? Wherein stands the ground thereof?
It proceeds from nothing else but from the pride of the devil, and self will.
19. Who planted you in the beginning? Your princes and kings, whom you have served: to what end are they? That pride might be arrayed in brave apparel, and that men might not say of the high offices of God, They are clothed with common apparel; but that they might be distinguished from the lowly and simple: and that was even Lucifer's fall.
20. But Christ on earth had not whereon to lay his head (Matt. viii. 20), neither house, nor anything else. So also a Christian has nothing for his own, but what he has, he has it for his office sake, and serves his Lord therein; but he that serves otherwise, he serves the Adamical self and not Christ; and is no Christian, but a mere titulary Christian. But he is a child of nature, of the kingdom of this world, in whose inward ground hell stands, and serves the kingdom of darkness: outwardly he serves indeed the type of God according to love and anger, where all things together stand in strife, till the day of separation, and the restoration of that which was before such doings.
21. For in this world all goes on in free will, that which has no law has also no judgement; but that which has a law, that has its judgement in itself: therefore seeing man, especially a Christian, has a law, viz. that he is no more his own, in that he is given up to another, viz. to Christ, and yet will not be subject to him, then is the judgment in the law, and condemns the own will and self.
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