(77) Thus all had its Beginning, even to the Angels and Devils; which before the Creation of Heaven, Stars, and the Earth, were proceeded out of the same Power, out of which the Heaven, the Stars, and the Earth were proceeded.

(58) God in his Moving created the holy Angels at once, not out of a strange Matter, but out of himself, out of his own Power, and eternal Wisdom.

(2) Then presently he thinks God has made this thus, out of or from his predestinate Purpose, out of nothing: How then can God be in this Being? Or, can that be God himself? He continually imagines, that this is only a House, wherein God rules and dwells by his Spirit. God cannot be such a God, whose Being consists in the Power of this Government, or Dominion.

(33) For before the Beginning of the Creation of the Creatures, there was Nothing but only GOD; and where there is Nothing, out of that, Nothing will be. All Things must have a Cause or Root, or else Nothing will be.

(41) No: For if God had known it before the Time of the Creation of Angels, it had then been an eternal predestinate purposed Will in God to have it so, and it had been no Enmity against God, but God had indeed at the Beginning created and made him a Devil.

(12) Thou must not here think, that God has made some new Thing, which never was before; for if that were so, then there had been another God, which is not possible to be. For without, or besides this one only God, nothing is at all, for the Gates of Hell are not any where without, beyond, or absent from this one only God; only there is a Partition or Distinction between the Love in the Light, and the kindled Wrath in the Darkness, so that the one cannot comprehend the other, and yet hang one to another as one Body.

(68) Now, where nothing is, there nothing can come to be: All Things must have a Root, else can nothing grow: If the seven Spirits of Nature had not been from Eternity, then there would no Angel, no Heaven, also no Earth have come to be.

(6) "For he speaks some truths. For the devil fills him with his own spirit, if perchance he may be able to cast down any one from what is right." All things, therefore, are dispensed from heaven for good, "that by the Church may be made known the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal foreknowledge, which He purposed in Christ." Nothing withstands God: nothing opposes Him: seeing He is Lord and omnipotent.

(167) Thou sayest, if thy Fall had not been, Man would never have been thought of. Answer. O thou lying Devil! Though that should be true, yet the Saltiter out of which Man is made, which is also from Eternity, as well as that out of which thou art made, had stood in eternal Joy and bright Glory, and had likewise risen up in God, and had tasted of the gracious, amiable, blessed Love in the seven Spirits of God, and enjoyed the heavenly Joy.

(93) But when God, after the Fall of Lucifer, made the Creation of this World, then all was created out of the same Saltiter wherein Lucifer had his Seat: And so afterwards the Creatures also in this World must needs be created out of that same Saltiter, which now form themselves according to the Condition or Kind of the kindled Qualities, Evil and Good. And

(77) out of and from the same Body of the seven Spirits of God, are all Things made and produced, all Angels, all Devils, the Heaven, the Earth, the Stars, the Elements, Men, Beasts, Fowls, Fishes; all Worms, Wood, Trees, also Stones, Herbs and Grass, and all whatsoever is.

(21) Could He then have made Himself otherwise than as He did?

If He could we must deny Him the power to produce goodness for He certainly cannot produce evil. Power, There, is no producer of the inapt; it is that steadfast constant which is most decidedly power by inability to depart from unity: ability to produce the inapt inability to hold by the fitting; that self-making must be definite once for all since it is the right; besides, who could upset what is made by the will of God and is itself that will?

But whence does He draw that will seeing that essence, source of will, is inactive in Him?

The will was included in the essence; they were identical: or was there something, this will for instance, not existing in Him? All was will, nothing unwilled in Him. There is then nothing before that will: God and will were primally identical.

God, therefore, is what He willed, is such as He willed; and all that ensued upon that willing was what that definite willing engendered: but it engendered nothing new; all existed from the first.

As for his "self-containing," this rightly understood can mean only that all the rest is maintained in virtue of Him by means of a certain participation; all traces back to the Supreme; God Himself, self-existing always, needs no containing, no participating; all in Him belongs to Him or rather He needs nothing from them in order to being Himself.

When therefore you seek to state or to conceive Him, put all else aside; abstracting all, keep solely to Him; see that you add nothing; be sure that your theory of God does not lessen Him. Even you are able to take contact with Something in which there is no more than That Thing itself to affirm and know, Something which lies away above all and is- it alone- veritably free, subject not even to its own law, solely and essentially That One Thing, while all else is thing and something added.

(6) When God Almighty had decreed in his Council, that he would make Angels or Creatures out of himself: then he made them out of his eternal Power and Wisdom, according to the Form and Manner of the Ternary in his Deity, and according to the Qualities in his Divine Being.

(26) He is proceeded or born of Nothing, but Himself is all in Eternity; and all whatsoever is, is come from his Power, which from Eternity goes from him.

(51) "From hence, in the Creation, Good and Evil are existed: And I exhort the Reader to conceive our very deep Sense right, and not mistake or go astray here, but to read our other Writings, where these Things are sufficiently explained." Of the great Sin, and contrary or opposite Will; and of the eternal Enmity of King Lucifer, together with his whole Host or Army against God.

(14) Before the Times of the created Heavens, the Stars and the Elements, and before the Creation of angels, there was no such Wrath of God, no Death, no Devil, no Earth nor Stones, neither were there any Stars. But the Deity generated itself very meekly and lovingly, and formed, framed, and figured itself in Ideas, Shapes, and Images, which were incorporated according to the qualifying or fountain Spirits in their generating, wrestling, and rising up, and passed away again also through their Wrestling, and figured or framed themselves into another Form or Condition, all according to the Primacy or Predominance of each qualifying or fountain Spirit, as you may read before.

(21) But neither is the Evil in things existing. For, if all things existing are from the Good, and the Good is in all things existing, and embraces all, either the Evil will not be in things existing, or it will be in the Good; and certainly it will not be in the Good, for neither is cold in fire, nor to do evil in Him, Who turns even the evil to good. But, if it shall be, how will the Evil be in the Good? If forsooth, from Itself, it is absurd and impossible. For it is not possible, as the infallibility of the Oracles affirms, that a "good tree should bring forth evil fruits," nor certainly, vice versa. But, if not from Itself, it is evident that it will be from another source and cause. For, either the Evil will be from the Good, or the Good from the Evil; or, if this be not possible, both the Good and the Evil will be from another source and cause, for no dual is source, but a Unit will be source of every dual. Further, it is absurd that two entirely contraries should proceed and be from one and the same, and that the self-same source should be, not simplex and unique, but divided and double, and contrary to itself, and be changed; and certainly it is not possible that there should be two contrary sources of things existing, and that these should be contending in each other, and in the whole. For, if this were granted, even Almighty God will not be in repose, nor free from disquietude, if there were indeed something bringing disturbance even to Him. Then, everything will be in disorder, and always fighting; and yet the Good distributes friendship to all existing things, and is celebrated by the holy theologians, both as very Peace, and Giver of Peace. Wherefore, things good are both friendly and harmonious, every one, and products of one life, and marshalled to one good; and kind, and similar, and affable to each other. So that the Evil is not in God, and the Evil is not inspired by God. But neither is the Evil from God, for, either He is not good, or He does good, and produces good things; and, not once in a way, and some; and at another time not, and not all; for this would argue transition and change, even as regards the very Divinest thing of all, the Cause. But, if in God, the Good is sustaining essence, God, when changing from the Good, will be sometimes Being, and sometimes not Being. But, if He has the Good by participation, He will then have it from another; and sometimes He will have it, and sometimes not. The Evil, then, is not from God, nor in God, neither absolutely nor occasionally.

(152) thus you have here the true Description of an expelled Angel or Devil, as also the Cause hereof, and that not written in a Similitude only, but in the Spirit, through that Power out of which all Things are come to be.

(23) But now the holy God would not let this Place of his Body, understand the Space or Room of this World, stand in eternal Darkness and Ignominy, and leave it to the Devils for their proper own, but generated a new Regiment or Dominion of Light, and of all the seven qualifying or fountain Spirits of the Deity, which the Devil could neither apprehend, nor lay hold on or touch; neither was it useful or profitable to him at all.

(77) But now seeing he is a sworn Arch-enemy of God, and though indeed the Disputants and Helpers of the Devil will needs force it so in Arguments, that God wills the Good and also the Evil, and that he has created some Men to Damnation, therefore and thereupon the Spirit of God cites them, upon Pain of eternal Enmity, to come before this Looking-Glass, wherein their Heart shall be laid open; and they shall see what God is, and who the Devil is, or how he is become a Devil.