(125) Now as all angels are bound to the king, so is the king also bound to God his Creator, as body and soul; the body signifieth God; and the soul signifieth the angelical king, who is in the body of God, and is become a creature in the body of God, and abideth eternally in the body of God, as the soul does in its nest. And therefore also has God so highly glorified him, as his own propriety, or as the soul is glorified in the body.

(23) Thou must not understand this in an earthly manner; for an angel has no guts, neither flesh nor bones, but is constituted or composed by the divine power in the shape, form and manner of a man, and has all members like man, except the members of generation, and the fundament or going out of the draff, neither has an angel need of them.

(11) Now behold! An angel, and a man also, is thus: The power in the whole body has all the qualities, as it is in God the Father.

(2) So the best thing on earth is the most pious man; and the best thing in heaven, the nearer in place and purer, is an angel, the partaker of the eternal and blessed life. But the nature of the Son, which is nearest to Him who is alone the Almighty One, is the most perfect, and most holy, and most potent, and most princely, and most kingly, and most beneficent. This is the highest excellence, which orders all things in accordance with the Father's will, and holds the helm of the universe in the best way, with unwearied and tireless power, working all things in which it operates, keeping in view its hidden designs. For from His own point of view the Son of God is never displaced; not being divided, not severed, not passing from place to place; being always everywhere, and being contained nowhere; complete mind, the complete paternal light; all eyes, seeing all things, hearing all things, knowing all things, by His power scrutinizing the powers. To Him is placed in subjection all the host of angels and gods; He, the paternal Word, exhibiting a the holy administration for Him who put [all] in subjection to Him.

(88) But when the heart of God sheweth forth itself with its clarity or brightness, then there riseth up the whole host or army of all the three kingdoms of the angels; and in this rising up of the heart of God the Man JESUS CHRIST is King and Chief. He leadeth the royal chorus or choir, with all the holy souls of men, till the Last Judgment Day. And then the holy men are perfect angels, and the wicked, perfect devils, and that in its eternity.

(36) Answer The holy soul of a man, and the spirit of an angel, are and have one and the same substance and being, and there is no difference therein, but only in the quality itself, or in their corporeal government; that which qualifieth outwardly, or from without, in man by the air has a corrupt earthly quality, yet on the other side, hidden from the creatures, it has also a divine and heavenly quality.

(59) The person or the body of a king of angels is generated out of all the qualities, and out of all the powers of his whole kingdom, through the moving, welling-up spirit of God; and therefore such a one is their king, in that his power reacheth into all the angels of his whole kingdom, and he is the head and general or leader, the most beautiful and most powerful Cherubim or throne angel. Such a one was lord Lucifer also before his fall. [60. "This also is more fundamentally described in our second and third books; viz. in the Three Principles of the Divine Being, and in the Threefold Life of Man."] Of the Ground or Foundation, and Mystery.

(14) First, the body is out of all the powers of the Father, and in those powers is the light of God the Son; now the powers of the Father and of the Son, which are in an angel creaturely, generate an understanding spirit, which riseth up in that angel.

(4) But I observe that Angels first were initiated in the Divine mystery of the love of Jesus towards man, then, through them, the gift of its knowledge passed to us. Thus, for example, the most divine Gabriel instructed Zachariah, the Hierarch, that the son who was to be born to him, beyond hope, by Divine grace, should be a prophet of the God-incarnate work of the Lord Jesus, to be manifested to the world for its salvation, as becomes the Divine goodness; and he revealed to Mary, how, in her, should be born the supremely Divine mystery of the unutterable God-formation. Yet another Angel instructed Joseph, how, in very truth, should be fulfilled the things Divinely promised to his ancestor David. Another declared glad tidings to the shepherds, as being purified by their separation from the multitude, and their quiet life, and, with him, a multitude of the Heavenly Host announced to those on earth that often-sung doxology. Let us then ascend to the highest manifestations of light contained in the Oracles, for I perceive that even Jesus Himself, the superessential Cause of the super-heavenly Beings, when He had come to our condition, without change, did not overstep the good order which becomes mankind, which Himself arranged and took, but readily subjected Himself to the dispositions of the Father and God, through Angels; and, through their mediation, was announced to Joseph the departure of the Son to Egypt, which had been arranged by the Father, and again the return to Judaea from Egypt. And through Angels we see Him subjecting Himself to the Father's decrees. For I forbear to speak, as addressing one who knows the teaching of our hierarchical tradition, both concerning the Angel who strengthened the Lord Jesus, or that even Jesus Himself, when He had come to manifest the good work of our beneficent salvation, was called Angel of Great Counsel. For, as He Himself says, after the manner of an Angel, "Whatsoever He heard from the Father, He announced to us."

(37) But the holy soul understands it well, as the kingly prophet David saith, [Psalm civ. 3] The Lord rideth on the wings of the wind. In the angel the divine property qualifies only in perfect holiness, divinity and purity. Question.

(2) But with this difference alone, that an angel, and a man, is a creature, and not the whole being, but a son of the whole being, whom the whole being has generated; and therefore it is fit that it should be in subjection to the whole being, seeing that it is the son of the body of the whole being.

(97) But here thou must know that the bodies of angels cannot apprehend the birth or geniture of God, neither does their body understand it, their spirit alone understands it, but the body holdeth still, as the nature in God does, and lets the spirit cowork and labour with God, and play lovingly.

(60) In this body of nature the kindling was now made, for out of this body the angels also were created; and if they had not elevated and kindled themselves in their highmindedness, then their body would have stood eternally in a stillness, and in an incomprehensible meekness, as it is in the other principalities of angels that are without, distinct from this world; and their spirit would have generated itself eternally in their body of meekness, as the Holy Trinity does in the body or corporeity of God; and their inborn or innate spirit would have been one heart, one will, and one love with or in the Holy Trinity: For to that end they were created in the body of God, to be a joy to the Deity.

(7) And as the Son of God is generated in the midst or centre of the seven spirits of God, and is the life and Heart of the seven spirits of God, so there was one angelical king created in the midst or centre of his circumference, sphere, extent or region out of nature, also out of nature's heaven, out of the power of all the seven qualifying or fountain spirits, and that now was the heart in one host, and he had in him the quality, might, power and strength of his whole host, and was the fairest among them, or of them all.

(123) So also are the three angelical kings lords over their angels, even to the heart and deepest ground, though they cannot corporeally or bodily vary or change themselves, as God himself can who has created them; yet they rule them (viz. the angels) corporeally, and are bound or united to them, as body and soul are bound the one to the other.

(78) In this form, condition and manner it is with the angels also. All the angels of one kingdom signify the many and various powers of God the Father; the angelical king signifieth the Son of the Father, or the heart out of the powers of the Father, out of which the angels are made; the exit out of the king of angels, or his going forth into his angels, or his affecting of his angels, signifieth God the Holy Ghost.

(12) And as all the powers in God the Father rise up from eternity to eternity, so all the powers rise up also in an angel, and in a man, into the head; for higher they cannot rise; for they are but creatures that have a beginning and end.

(20) Now one may ask, What manner of substance or thing is it, that the Son of God is [thus] generated in the centre or midst of these three kingdoms? Surely one angelical host must needs be nearer unto him than another, seeing their kingdom has so great a deep?

(1) THE true heaven, which is our own proper human heaven, into which the soul goeth when it parteth from the body, and into which Christ our King is entered, and from whence it was that he came from his Father, and was born, and became man in the body or womb of the Virgin Mary, has hitherto been close hidden from the children of men, and they have had many opinions about it.

(1) BEHOLD! as the being or essence in God is, so also is the being in man and in angels; and as the divine body is, so also is the angelical and the human body or corporeity.