(163) therefore has Christ ordained or instituted the Baptism or New Birth or Regeneration of the Holy Ghost, in the Water, because the Birth of the Light rises up in the sweet Water in the Heart. [†Printed Copy, Brain.]

(16) Again, when we read of the old man and the new man we must mark what that meaneth. The old man is Adam and disobedience, the Self, the Me, and so forth. But the new man is Christ and true obedience, a giving up and denying oneself of all temporal things, and seeking the honour of God alone in all things. And when dying and perishing and the like are spoken of, it meaneth that the old man should be destroyed, and not seek its own either in spiritual or in natural things. For where this is brought about in a true divine light, there the new man is born again. In like manner, it hath been said that man should die unto himself, that is, to earthly pleasures, consolations, joys, appetites, the I, the Self, and all that is thereof in man, to which he clingeth and on which he is yet leaning with content, and thinketh much of. Whether it be the man himself, or any other creature, whatever it be, it must depart and die, if the man is to be brought aright to another mind, according to the truth. Thereunto doth St. Paul exhort us, saying: “Put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts: . . . and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”17 Now he who liveth to himself after the old man, is called and is truly a child of Adam; and though he may give diligence to the ordering of his life, he is still the child and brother of the Evil Spirit. But he who liveth in humble obedience and in the new man which is Christ, he is, in like manner, the brother of Christ and the child of God. Behold! where the old man dieth and the new man is born, there is that second birth of which Christ saith, “Except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”18 Likewise St. Paul saith, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”19 That is to say, all who follow Adam in pride, in lust of the flesh, and in disobedience, are dead in soul, and never will or can be made alive but in Christ.

(57) For the Light is in the Midst or Center of the Birth or Geniture, and is the Place of Life, wherein the meek Life of God is generated from or out of all the Powers of the Father, and in the same Place the Holy Ghost goes forth from the Father and the Son.

(36) For the Generating, or Geniture of the Father cannot catch or comprehend the Light, and use it to its Generating, but the Light stands by itself, and is not comprehended by any Geniture, and it replenishes and enlightens the whole Geniture, viz. 'the only begotten Son of the Father. And this Light I call, in the human Birth or Geniture, the animated or soulish Birth,' [*understand the Image, which budded forth out of the Essences of the Soul, according to the Similitude of God,*] or the Soul’s Birth or Geniture which qualifies, mixes, or unites with this animated or soulish Birth or Geniture of God; and herein is Man’s Soul one Heart with God; but that is when it stands in this Light.

(53) For every Man that desires to be saved, must with his innate infant Births or Genitures be as the whole Deity with all the three Births in this World is. [See ch. 10. Vulg. 55. 52.]

(161) For, Christ saith; 'You must be born anew, or else you cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.' [John 3:3, 7.]

(132) And this now is the Water of Life, which is generated in the Light of God out of the hard Death. And thus the Light of God in the sweet Water of Heaven broke through the astringent and hard dark Death; and thus the Heaven is made out of the Midst or Center of the Water.