Search

(54) so the Son of God is continually generated from all the Powers of his Father from Eternity, and is not made, but is the Heart and Lustre shining forth from the Powers of his Heavenly Father; a self-subsisting Person, the Center, or Body of the Lustre in the Deep.

(52) so the Son in the Father is a self-subsisting Person, and enlightens all the Powers in the Father, and is the Father’s Joy or Heart in his Centre, or in the Midst of him. Observe here the great Mystery of God.

(8) For He was the Wisdom "in which" the Sovereign God "delighted." For the Son is the power of God, as being the Father's most ancient Word before the production of all things, and His Wisdom. He is then properly called the Teacher of the beings formed by Him. Nor does He ever abandon care for men, by being drawn aside from pleasure, who, having assumed flesh, which by nature is susceptible of suffering, trained it to the condition of impossibility.

(5) God created the soul after the image of His highest perfection. He issued forth from the treasure-house of the everlasting Fatherhood in which He had rested from all eternity. Then the Son opened the tent of His everlasting glory and came forth from His high place to fetch His Bride, whom the Father had espoused to Him from all Eternity, back to that heaven from which she came. Therefore He came forth rejoicing as a bridegroom and suffered the pangs of love. Then He returned to His secret chamber in the silence and stillness of the everlasting Fatherhood. As He came forth from the Highest, so He returned to the Highest with His Bride, and revealed to her the hidden treasures of His Godhead.

(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.]

(56) Thus the Father is the self-subsisting Being of all Powers, and the Son is the Heart in the Father, which is generated continually out of all the Powers of the Father, who again enlightens the Powers of the Father.

(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.

(16) at first came out of the Son of God in the Powers of the Father, into the Angelical Body creaturely, and is the Body's proper own, which cannot be withdrawn from it by any Thing, unless itself extinguishes it, as Lucifer did.

(5) Now as the Body generates the Soul, so the seven Spirits of God generate the Son; and as the Soul is a peculiar distinct Thing when it is generated, and yet is united with the Body, and cannot subsist without the Body, so also is the Son of God, when he is generated, a peculiar, several, distinct Thing also, and yet cannot subsist without the Father. Now observe, [united] [distinct]

(31) And out of this expressing and revealing of Himself unto Himself, ariseth the distinction of Persons. But when God as God is made man, or where God dwelleth in a godly man, or one who is “made a partaker of the divine nature,” in such a man somewhat appertaineth unto God which is His own, and belongeth to Him only and not to the creature. And without the creature, this would lie in His own Self as a Substance or well-spring, but would not be manifested or wrought out into deeds. Now God will have it to be exercised and clothed in a form, for it is there only to be wrought out and executed. What else is it for? Shall it lie idle? What then would it profit? As good were it that it had never been; nay better, for what is of no use existeth in vain, and that is abhorred by God and Nature. However God will have it wrought out, and this cannot come to pass (which it ought to do) without the creature. Nay, if there ought not to be, and were not this and that—works, and a world full of real things, and the like, —what were God Himself, and what had He to do, and whose God would He be? Here we must turn and stop, or we might follow this matter and grope along until we knew not where we were, nor how we should find our way out again.