(7) The Father and the Son have one Will, and that Will is the Holy Ghost, Who gives Himself to the soul so that the Divine Nature permeates the powers of the soul so that it can only do God-like works. Just as a spring, which perpetually flows and waters the roots of the flowers, so that the flowers bloom and receive their colours from the water of the spring, so the Godhead imparts Itself to the capacities of the soul that it may grow in the likeness of God. The more that the soul receives of the Divine Nature, the more it grows like It, and the closer becomes its union with God. It may arrive at such an intimate union that God at last draws it to Himself altogether, so that there is no distinction left, in the soul's consciousness, between itself and God, though God still regards it as a creature. Wherefore let yourselves not be misled by the light of nature. The higher the degree of knowledge which the soul attains to in the light of grace, the darker seems to it the light of nature.

If the soul would know the real truth it must examine itself, whether it has withdrawn from all things, whether it has lost itself, whether it loves God purely with His love and nothing of its own at the same time, so that it may not be separated from Him by anything, and whether God alone dwells in it. If it has lost itself, it is as when the Virgin Mary lost Christ. She sought Him for three days, and yet was sure that she would find Him. All the while Christ was in the highest class in the school of His Father, unconscious of His mother's seeking Him. Thus happens it to the noble soul which goes to God to school, and learns there what God is in His essence, and what He is in the Trinity, and what He is in man, and what is most acceptable to Him. St Augustine saith that the righteousness of God in the Godhead and in the Trinity and in all creatures is the source of the chief joy which is in heaven. God in human nature is a lamp of living light, and "the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not." The darkness must ever more flee the light, as the night flees day.

Thus the soul learns to know God's will. St Paul saith, "This is God's will, our sanctification." And this is our sanctification, to know what we were before time; what we are in time, and what we shall be after time. Thus the soul loses itself in these three, and recketh naught of the body, till it comes to it in the temple, and obeys it without murmuring. The Father is a revelation of the Godhead, the Son is an image and countenance of the Father, and the Holy Ghost is an effulgence of that countenance, and a mutual love between Them, and these properties They have always possessed in Themselves. The Three Persons have stooped out of pity down to human nature, and the Son became man, and was the most despised man on the earth, and suffered pain at the hands of the creatures whom He Himself created with the Father, through Whose will He became man. Thus was Christ till His death, and when He rose from the dead then was seen the most despised of all men united with the Godhead in the Person of Christ.

(4) Whether, then, it be the law which is connate and natural, or that given afterwards, which is meant, it is certainly of God; and both the law of nature and that of instruction are one. Thus also Plato, in The Statesman, says that the lawgiver is one; and in The Laws, that he who shall understand music is one; teaching by these words that the Word is one, and God is one. And Moses manifestly calls the Lord a covenant: "Behold I am my Covenant with thee," having previously told him not to seek the covenant in writing. For it is a covenant which God, the Author of all, makes. For God is called from qesis (placing), and order or arrangement. And in the Preaching of Peter you will find the Lord called Law and Word. But at this point, let our first Miscellany of gnostic notes, according to the true philosophy, come to a close.

(31) But that other thing which they affirm, how that we ought to throw off and cast aside the life of Christ, and all laws and commandments, customs and order and the like, and pay no heed to them, but despise and make light of them, is altogether false and a lie. Now some may say; “Since neither Christ nor others can ever gain anything, either by a Christian life, or by all these exercises and ordinances, and the like, nor turn them to any account, seeing that they possess already all that can be had through them, what cause is there why they should not henceforth eschew them altogether? Must they still retain and practise them?” Behold, ye must look narrowly into this matter. There are two kinds of Light; the one is true and the other is false. The true light is that Eternal Light which is God; or else it is a created light, but yet divine, which is called grace. And these are both the true Light. So is the false light Nature or of Nature. But why is the first true, and the second false? This we can better perceive than say or write. To God, as Godhead, appertain neither will, nor knowledge, nor manifestation, nor anything that we can name, or say, or conceive. But to God as God,39 it belongeth to express Himself, and know and love Himself, and to reveal Himself to Himself; and all this without any creature. And all this resteth in God as a substance but not as a working, so long as there is no creature.

(1) Whence the law was rightly said to have been given by Moses, being a rule of fight and wrong; and we may call it with accuracy the divine ordinance (qesmos, inasmuch as it was given by God through Moses. It accordingly conducts to the divine. Paul says: "The law was instituted because of transgressions, till the seed should come, to whom the promise was made." Then, as if in explanation of his meaning, he adds: "But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up," manifestly through fear, in consequence of sins, "unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed; so that the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we should be justified by faith." The true legislator is he who assigns to each department of the soul what is suitable to it and to its operations. Now Moses, to speak comprehensively, was a living law, governed by the benign Word. Accordingly, he furnished a good polity, which is the right discipline of men in social life. He also handled the administration of justice, which is that branch of knowledge which deals with the correction of transgressors in the interests of justice. Co-ordinate with it is the faculty of dealing with punishments, which is a knowledge of the due measure to be observed in punishments. And punishment, in virtue of its being so, is the correction of the soul. In a word, the whole system of Moses is suited for the training of such as are capable of becoming good and noble men, and for hunting out men like them; and this is the art of command. And that wisdom, which is capable of treating rightly those who have been caught by the Word, is legislative wisdom. For it is the property of this wisdom, being most kingly, to possess and use, It is the wise man, therefore, alone whom the philosophers proclaim king, legislator, general, just, holy, God-beloved. And if we discover these qualities in Moses, as shown from the Scriptures themselves, we may, with the most assured persuasion, pronounce Moses to be truly wise. As then we say that it belongs to the shepherd's art to care for the sheep; for so "the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep;" so also we shall say that legislation, inasmuch as it presides over and cares for the flock of men, establishes the virtue of men, by fanning into flame, as far as it can, what good there is in humanity.

(58) Therefore also God gave the Law to the Jews, that they should diligently study and endeavour after meek Holiness and Love, that thereby all the World might have them for their Looking-glass or Mirror. But when they grew proud, and boasted in their Birth, instead of entering into Love, they turned the Law of Love into Sharpness of Wrath; then God removed their Candlestick, and went to the Heathens.

(46) Now if a Man should say, the Son of God was an Image, circumscriptive or measurable like the Sun, then the Three Persons would only be in that Place where the Son is, and his Splendor or Shining would be without or beyond him, and as gone forth from the Sun, and the Father would be One, only externally, without or besides the Son, and then the Power of the Father, which would be afar off, and wide distant from the Son, would not generate the Son and Holy Ghost, externally, without and beyond the angelical Gates; and so there would be a Being not almighty, externally, without or besides this Place of the Son; and, moreover, the Father would be a circumscribed or measurable Being. [Threefold Life.] [Three Principles.]

(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.

(17) But seeing the Love and Meekness of God would not leave the Body or Place of this kindled wrath World flicking in eternal Wrath and Ignominy, therefore he generated the whole old Body of this World again into a rectified, reformed Body; wherein Life ruled in a divine Manner and Way; though in the kindled Wrath, yet it must subsist according to the Right of the Deity, that out of it a new Body might be generated, which should subsist in Holiness and Purity in Eternity.