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(17) But seeing the Light in the outermost Birth was extinguished, the Heat also was captivated in the Comprehensibility or Palpability, and could no more generate its Life. From thence Death came into Nature, so that Nature or the corrupt Earth could no more help it, and thereupon another Creation of Light must needs follow, or else the Earth would have been an eternal indissolvable Death; but now the Earth generates or brings forth Fruit in the Power and Kindling of the created Light. Now one might ask: What is the Condition then of this twofold Birth or Geniture? Is God then extinguished in the Kindling of the Wrath-fire, in the Place of this World, so that nothing is there else but a mere Wrath-fire? Or is the one only God become a twofold God? Answer.

(51) Now this Nature is as a dead unintellectual Being, and stands or consists not in the Power of the Birth or Geniture, but is a Body, wherein the Power generates.

(2) For this [Re-] birth of Cosmos is the making new of all good things, and the most holy and most pious bringing-back again of Nature’s self, by means of a set course of time,—of Nature, which was without beginning, and which is without an end. For that God’s Will hath no beginning; and, in that ’tis the same and as it is, it is without an end.

[Asclepius] Because God’s Nature’s the Determination of the Will. Determination is the Highest Good; is it not so, Thrice-greatest one?

(102) And that Nature is indeed the Body of God, wherein the Deity generates itself, but the Devils cannot apprehend the meek Birth of God, which rises up in the Light. For their Body is dead to the Light, and lives in the outermost and austere Birth or Geniture of God, wherein the Light never kindles itself again any more.

(136) Thou must not think, that the Light of the Sun and of Nature is the Heart of God, which shines in Secret. No; thou oughtest not to worship the Light of Nature, it is not the Heart of God, but it is a kindled Light in Nature, whose Power and Heart stands in the Unctuosity or Fatness of the sweet Water, and of all the other Spirits in the third Birth or Geniture, and is not called God. And

(100) For its Birth also has a Beginning out of all Powers, and therefore with its Light and Heat it is again one Spirit and Heart in the whole Body of this World. And

(29) Every Star has a several peculiar Property, which thou mayest perceive by the curious Ornament of the budding blossoming Earth. And the Creator has therefore rebuilt and revived again the old kindled Body into so many and various Powers, that through this old Life, in the Wrath, such a new Life might generate itself therein, through the Closure of Heaven, that that new Life might have all the Powers and Operations that ever the old had before the Times of Wrath, that it might qualify, mix, or unite with the pure Deity distinct from this World, and that it might be one holy God, together with the Deity without, distinct from this World.

(139) For the outermost Birth is Nature, and that ought not to reach back into the Heart of God, neither can it, but is the Body, in which the qualifying or fountain Spirits generate themselves, and show forth and manifest their Birth or Geniture by their Fruits.

(26) Thou must not think, that thereupon the outermost dead Birth or Geniture of the Earth has got such a Life through the risen Word that sprung up, so that it is no more a Death: No; that can never be, for that which is once dead in God, that is really dead, and in its own Power can never be living again; but the Word, which qualifies, mixes, or unites with the astral Birth in the Part of the Love, that generates the Life through the astral Birth or Geniture, through the Death.

(45) In this Kindling of the Light, in the Stars and Elements, the Birth of Nature did not thereupon wholly transmute or change itself into the holy Meekness, as it was before the Time of the Wrath, so that the Birth of Nature is now altogether holy and pure: No, but it stands in its sharpest, sufferest, and most anxious Birth, wherein the Wrath of God continually springs up like hellish Fire. [continually springs up]

(50) accordingly I find, that the Birth or Geniture of Nature stands to this Day, and generates itself just so as it first took its Beginning; and whatsoever rises up in this World, whether Men, Beasts, Trees, Herbs, Grass, mineral Oars, or be they what they will, all rises up in such a Quality, Manner, and Form; also every Life, be it good or bad, takes its Original thus.

(13) But what is the difference between the Wisdom thus conducting the universe and the principle known as Nature?

This Wisdom is a first while Nature is a last: for Nature is an image of that Wisdom, and, as a last in the soul, possesses only the last of the Reason-Principle: we may imagine a thick waxen seal, in which the imprint has penetrated to the very uttermost film so as to show on both sides, sharp cut on the upper surface, faint on the under. Nature, thus, does not know, it merely produces: what it holds it passes, automatically, to its next; and this transmission to the corporeal and material constitutes its making power: it acts as a thing warmed, communicating to what lies in next contact to it the principle of which it is the vehicle so as to make that also warm in some less degree.

Nature, being thus a mere communicator, does not possess even the imaging act. There is intellection, superior to imagination; and there is imagination standing midway between that intellection and the impression of which alone Nature is capable. For Nature has no perception or consciousness of anything; imagination has consciousness of the external, for it enables that which entertains the image to have knowledge of the experience encountered, while Nature's function is to engender- of itself though in an act derived from the active principle .

Thus the Intellectual-Principle possesses: the Soul of the All eternally receives from it; this is the soul's life; its consciousness is its intellection of what is thus eternally present to it; what proceeds from it into Matter and is manifested there is Nature, with which- or even a little before it- the series of real being comes to an end, for all in this order are the ultimates of the intellectual order and the beginnings of the imitative.

There is also the decided difference that Nature operates toward soul, and receives from it: soul, near to Nature but superior, operates towards Nature but without receiving in turn; and there is the still higher phase with no action whatever upon body or upon Matter.

(1) NOW when the whole Body of Nature in the Extent, Space, or Circumference of this World, was benumbed or deadened, as in the hard Death, and yet that the Life was hid therein, thereupon God moved the whole Body of the Nature of this World on the fourth Day, and generated the Stars from or out of Nature, out of the rilen Light. For the Wheel of God's Birth or Geniture moved itself again, as it had done from Eternity. [† In a printed Copy, Of the dead Nature, and of the fourth Day.]

(48) For the Birth or Geniture of God also is thus; the seventh Nature-Spirit does not reach back into its Father, which generates it, but holds still and is quiet as a Body, and lets the Father’s Will, which is the other six Spirits, to form and image in it how they please.

(22) For thus stood the Birth or Geniture of Nature in the Time of the Kindling, and was thus together incorporated in the Earth, and must also in such a Birth spring up again: For it is written; 'That the dead Earth should let the Grass and Herbs, and Trees spring up, each according to its Kind,' that is, according to the Kind and Quality, as it had been from Eternity, and as it had been in the heavenly Quality, Kind and Form. For that is called its own Kind, which is received in the Mother's Body or Womb, and is its own by Right of Nature, as its own peculiar Life. [Gen. 1. 12.]