And although I write now, as if there was a Beginning in the eternal Birth, yet it is not so; but the eternal Nature thus begets [or generates] itself without Beginning. My Writings must be understood in a creaturely Manner, as the Birth of Man is, who is a Similitude of God. Although it be just so in the eternal Being, [Essence or Substance,] yet that is both without Beginning and without End; and my Writing is only to this End, that Man might learn to know what he is, what he was in the Beginning, how he was a very glorious eternal holy Man, that should never have known the Gate of the strong [or austere] Birth in the Eternity, if he had not suffered himself to lust after it through the Infection of the Devil, and had not eaten of that naked and vain Man in a bestial Form, and lost the heavenly Garment of the divine Power, and lives now in the Kingdom of the Devil, in the i infected Salnitre, and feeds upon the infected Food. Therefore it is necessary for us to learn to know ourselves, what we are, and how we might be redeemed from the anguishing austere Birth, and be regenerated or born anew, and live in the new Man, (which is like the first Man before the Fall,) in Christ our Regenerator.

Therefore it has a beginning in man, but none in God; and therefore I must also write in a creaturely manner, or else thou canst not understand it.

"Thus the Reader is to understand this book as concerning three Principles or births; viz. one is the original of the eternal nature, in the eternal...

Neither can I declare it unto thee in any other manner; for I must write as if the generating or geniture of God had or took a beginning when things...

Now, as the original and beginning of the life is, in a creature, so is the first regeneration of the nature of the new life in the corrupted body of...