(144) In this devouring abyss will rise up all manner of hellish fruits and forms, all according to the hellish quality and kind; as in heaven there spring up heavenly fruits and forms, according to the heavenly quality and kind.

(121) Therefore heaven must be a firmament between the sparkle which had conceived from the Heart of God in the first glance; that though the body might happen to perish, yet the holy seed might remain, which is the soul, which qualifieth, mixeth or uniteth with the Heart of God, out of which a new body might come to be, when the whole God should kindle again the deep of this world in the light of the Heart of God; and just so it is come to be with the body. The love of God have mercy, and take pity on it!

(2) Now, amongst the profane, some illogically think to go to a non-existence; others that the bodily blending with their proper souls will be severed once for all, as unsuitable to them in a Divine life and blessed lots, not considering nor being sufficiently instructed in Divine science, that our most Godlike life in Christ has already begun. But others assign to souls union with other bodies, committing, as I think, this injustice to them, that, after (bodies) have laboured together with the godly souls, and have reached the goal of their most Divine course, they relentlessly deprive them of their righteous retributions. And others (I do not know how they have strayed to conceptions of such earthly tendency) say, that the most holy and blessed repose promised to the devout is similar to our life in this world, and unlawfully reject, for those who are equal to the Angels, nourishments appropriate to another kind of life. None of the most religious men, however, will ever fall into such errors as these; but, knowing that their whole selves will receive the Christ-like inheritance, when they have come to the goal of this present life, they see more clearly their road to incorruption already become nearer, and extol the gifts of the Godhead, and are filled with a Divine satisfaction, no longer fearing the fall to a worse condition, but knowing well that they will hold firmly and everlastingly the good things already acquired. Those, however, who are full of blemishes, and unholy stains, even though they have attained to some initiation, yet, of their own accord, have, to their own destruction, rejected this from their mind, and have rashly followed their destructive lusts, to them when they have come to the end of their life here, the Divine regulation of the Oracles will no longer appear as before, a subject of scorn, but, when they have looked with different eyes upon the pleasures of their passions destroyed, and when they have pronounced blessed the holy life from which they thoughtlessly fell away, they are, piteously and against their will, separated from this present life, conducted to no holy hope, by reason of their shameful life.

(1) When, [then,] the soul’s departure from the body shall take place,—then shall the judgment and the weighing of its merit pass into its highest daimon’s power. And when he sees it pious is and just,—he suffers it to rest in spots appropriate to it. But if he find it soiled with stains of evil deeds, and fouled with vice,—he drives it from Above into the Depths, and hands it o’er to warring hurricanes and vortices of Air, of Fire, and Water.

(19) The soul in man, however - not every soul, but one that pious is - is a daimonic something and divine. And such a soul when from the body freed, if it have fought the fight of piety - the fight of piety is to know God and to do wrong to no man - such a soul becomes entirely mind. Whereas the impious soul remains in its own essence, chastised by its own self, and seeking for an earthly body where to enter, if only it be human. For that no other body can contain a human soul; nor is it right that any human soul should fall into the body of a thing that doth possess no reason. For that the law of God is this: to guard the human soul from such tremendous outrage.

(61) And though the dead body is in the midst or centre of hell among all the devils, yet, for all that, the new man reigneth with God in heaven, and the Tree of Life is to them a strong gate, through which they do enter into life: But of this thou wilt find more largely in its proper place. Now observe:

(27) These heavenly sprouts and springings thou must not wholly liken to this world: For there are two qualities in this world, a good and an evil; and many things grow through the power of the evil quality, which does not so in heaven.

(28) For heaven has but one form or manner: nothing grows there which is not good. Lord Lucifer alone has deformed and dressed this world in that manner: Therefore was mother Eve ashamed, when she had eaten of that which was dressed by the evil quality; in like manner also she was ashamed of her members of generation, which she had caused by the biting of this apple.

(2) For in this work, a soul drieth up in it all the root and the ground of sin that will always live in it after confession, be it never so busy. And, therefore, whoso will travail in this work, let him first cleanse his conscience; and afterward when he hath done that in him is lawfully, let him dispose him boldly but meekly thereto. And let him think, that he hath full long been holden therefrom. For this is that work in the which a soul should travail all his lifetime, though he had never sinned deadly. And the whiles that a soul is dwelling in this deadly flesh, it shall evermore see and feel this cumbrous cloud of unknowing betwixt him and God. And not only that, but in pain of the original sin it shall evermore see and feel that some of all the creatures that ever God made, or some of their works, will evermore press in remembrance betwixt it and God. And this is the right wisdom of God, that man, when he had sovereignty and lordship of all other creatures, because that he wilfully made him underling to the stirring of his subjects, leaving the bidding of God and his Maker; that right so after, when he would fulfil the bidding of God, he saw and felt all the creatures that should be beneath him, proudly press above him, betwixt him and his God.

(7) And there will not be left any man that eateth blood. Or that sheddeth the blood of man on the earth, Nor will there be left to him any seed or descen- dants living under heaven ; For into Sheol will they go, And into the place of condemnation will they descend. And into the darkness of the deep will they all be removed by a violent death. v

(72) For this body is but a husk, from which the new body grows— ["The new body grows out of the heavenly substantiality in the Word, out of the flesh and blood of Christ, out of the mystery of the old body."] —as it is with a grain of wheat in the earth. The husk or shell will not rise again, no more than it does in the wheat, but will remain for ever in death and in hell.

(39) But hearken, Friend, tarry yet a little while, and then give the bestial body for food to the worms: But when the total God shall kindle the seven spirits of God in the corrupted earth, then, if that same Salitter which thou sowest in the earth will not be capable of the fire, then thy qualifying or fountain spirits, which thou didst sow in thy lifetime, and which are sown in thy departure from hence, will rise again in the same Salitter which thou hast sown, and will triumph therein, and become a body again.

(110) Here thou seest once more how the kingdom of God and the kingdom of hell hang one to the other, as one body, and yet the one cannot comprehend the other. For the second birth, viz. the heat, light, love, and the sound or tone, is hidden in the outermost, and makes the outward moveable, so that the outward gathereth itself together, and generateth a body.

(159) Thou livest between heaven and hell, into whichsoever thou sowest, in that thou shalt reap also, and that will be thy food in eternity: If thou sowest scorn and contempt, thou wilt also reap scorn and contempt, and that will be thy food.

(146) So it goes also in the soul, when it presseth or breaks quite through in its flight or combat, then it beholdeth the Deity, as a flash of lightning; but the source, quality or fountain of sins covereth it suddenly again: For the Old Adam belongeth to the earth, and does not, with this flesh, belong to the Deity.

(114) And then there riseth up the striving or fighting fire in man, just as it rose up in heaven with Michael and Lucifer, and so the poor soul comes to be miserably crushed, stretched, tormented and put upon the rack.

(64) And that new body is the water of life, which is generated when the light presseth through the wrath; and the Holy Ghost is the former or framer therein. But heaven is the partition between love and wrath, and is the seat wherein the wrath is transmuted or changed into love.

(44) Therefore, thou child of man, be not discouraged, be not so timorous and despondent; for if thou sowest in thy zeal and earnest sincerity the seed of thy tears, thou dost not sow it in earth, but in heaven; for in thy astral birth thou sowest, and in thy animated or soulish birth thou reapest, and in the kingdom of heaven thou possessest and enjoyest it.

(87) Some men have many times, according to or in the sidereal or astral spirit, entered in thither, and been ravished in an ecstasy, as men call it, and have presently known the gates of heaven and of hell, and have told, shewn and declared how that many men dwell in hell, with or in their living bodies, or with their bodies alive: Such indeed have been scorned, derided or laughed at, but with great ignorance and indiscretion, for it is just so as they declare; which I will also describe more at large in its due place, and shew in what manner and condition it is with them.

(28) For this flesh cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, but is only a seed which is sown into the earth, out of which will grow an impalpable or incomprehensible body, such as the first was before the fall. But the spirit is eternal life, which uniteth, qualifieth or mixeth with God, and comprehendeth the internal Deity in nature.