(4) Some b Naturalists or Artists have undertaken to measure that Height and Distance, and have produced many strange and monstrous Devices. Indeed, before this my Knowledge and Revelation of God, I held that only to be the true Heaven, which in a round Circumference and Sphere, very Azure of a light blue Colour, extends itself above the Stars, supposing that God had therein his peculiar Being, and did rule only in the Power of his holy Spirit in this World. [Physici. Studiers of Natural Philosophy, called Physics; or the Mathematicians.]

(25) And though indeed that is united with thy Heaven as one Body, and so together is but the one Body of God, yet thou art not in that very Place which is above many hundred thousand Miles off become a Creature, but thou art in the Heaven of this World, which contains also in it just such a Deep, as is not of any human Number, [or Circumscriptive.] [or Circumscriptive.]

(144) Direct not thy mind to the vast surfaces of the Earth; for the Plant of Truth grows not upon the ground. Nor measure the motions of the Sun, collecting rules, for he is carded by the Eternal Will of the Father,. and not for your sake alone. Dismiss (from your mind) the impetuous course of the Moon, for she moveth always by the power of necessity. The progression of the Stars was not generated for your sake. The wide aërial flight of birds gives no true knowledge nor the dissection of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys, the basis of mercenary fraud:, flee from these if you would enter the sacred paradise of piety, where Virtue, Wisdom, and Equity are assembled.

(13) Now when this is done, then thou art as the whole or total God is, who himself is Heaven, Earth, Stars, and the Elements, and hast also such a Regimen or Dominion in thee, and art also such a Person, as the whole God in the Place of this World is. Now thou sayest: How shall I understand this? For the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Hell and of the Devil are distinct one from another, and cannot be one Body. Also the Earth and Stones are not God; nor the Heaven, Stars and Elements; much less can a Man be God; for if so, he could not be rejected by God. Here I will tell thee the Ground of all by Degrees, one Thing after another; therefore keep the Question in Mind. Of the astral Birth or Geniture, and of the Birth or Geniture of God.

(8) Now elevate thy Sense, Thoughts and Spirit into the Deep of the Deity, for here a Gate is opened. The Place or Space of this World, the Deep of the Earth, and above the Earth even to Heaven, as also the created Heaven, which was made out of the Midst of the Waters, which moves above the Stars, and which we behold with our Eyes, whose Depth we cannot found or reach with our Sense; all this Place or Room together was one Kingdom, and Lucifer was King therein before his being thrust out. [Or Center.]

(35) When they would write of God, then they seek for him without, and absent from this World, only above in a Kind of Heaven, as if he was some Image, that may be likened to something. Indeed they grant, that that God rules all in this World with a Spirit; but his corporeal Property or Habitation, they will needs have in a certain Heaven that many thousand Miles off.

(43) When thou beholdest the Deep betwixt the Stars and the Earth, canst thou say, that is not God, or there God is not? O, thou miserable corrupted Man! be instructed; for in the Deep above the Earth, where thou seest and knowest nothing, and sayest there is nothing, yet even there is the high-holy God in his Trinity, and is generating there, as well as in the high Heaven aloft above this World. Or doth thou think, that he departed and went away from his Seat where he did sit from Eternity, in or at the Time of the Creation of this World? O no; that cannot be, for though He could himself do so, He cannot do it, for He himself is All: And as little as a Member of the Body can be rent off from itself, so little can God also be divided, rent, or separated from being every where.

(13) But thou art to know this Mystery, that in the Center or Midst of these three Kingdoms is generated the Splendor or Son of God. [This needs Explanation: "Read the Second and Third Part of these Writings, where it is described more fundamentally: For nothing that is divisible, measurable, or circumscribible, is here meant or understood, only it was in Simplicity and Plainness set down so at the first, because of the slow and dull Apprehension."] [The Threefold Life.] [The Three Principles.]

(2) For if it so be, that they either read, or hear read or spoken, how that men should lift up their hearts unto God, as fast they stare in the stars as if they would be above the moon, and hearken when they shall hear any angel sing out of heaven. These men will sometime with the curiosity of their imagination pierce the planets, and make an hole in the firmament to look in thereat. These men will make a God as them list, and clothe Him full richly in clothes, and set Him in a throne far more curiously than ever was He depicted in this earth. These men will make angels in bodily likeness, and set them about each one with diverse minstrelsy, far more curious than ever was any seen or heard in this life. Some of these men the devil will deceive full wonderfully. For he will send a manner of dew, angels’ food they ween it be, as it were coming out of the air, and softly and sweetly falling in their mouths; and therefore they have it in custom to sit gaping as they would catch flies. Now truly all this is but deceit, seem it never so holy; for they have in this time full empty souls of any true devotion. Much vanity and falsehood is in their hearts, caused of their curious working. Insomuch, that ofttimes the devil feigneth quaint sounds in their ears, quaint lights and shining in their eyes, and wonderful smells in their noses: and all is but falsehood. And yet ween they not so, for them think that they have ensample of Saint Martin of this upward looking and working, that saw by revelation God clad in his mantle amongst His angels, and of Saint Stephen that saw our Lord stand in heaven, and of many other; and of Christ, that ascended bodily to heaven, seen of His disciples. And therefore they say that we should have our eyes up thither. I grant well that in our bodily observance we should lift up our eyes and our hands if we be stirred in spirit. But I say that the work of our spirit shall not be direct neither upwards nor downwards, nor on one side nor on other, nor forward nor backward, as it is of a bodily thing. For why, our work should be ghostly not bodily, nor on a bodily manner wrought.

(3) And it should by some reason rather be called a sudden changing, than any stirring of place. For time, place, and body: these three should be forgotten in all ghostly working. And therefore be wary in this work, that thou take none ensample at the bodily ascension of Christ for to strain thine imagination in the time of thy prayer bodily upwards, as thou wouldest climb above the moon. For it should on nowise be so, ghostly. But if thou shouldest ascend into heaven bodily, as Christ did, then thou mightest take ensample at it: but that may none do but God, as Himself witnesseth, saying: “There is no man that may ascend unto heaven but only He that descended from heaven, and became man for the love of man.” And if it were possible, as it on nowise may be, yet it should be for abundance of ghostly working only by the might of the spirit, full far from any bodily stressing or straining of our imagination bodily, either up, or in, on one side, or on other. And therefore let be such falsehood: it should not be so.

(3) To these statements the apostle will testify: "I know a man in Christ, caught up into the third heaven, and thence into Paradise, who heard unutterable words which it is not lawful for a man to speak," - intimating thus the impossibility of expressing God, and indicating that what is divine is unutterable by human power; if, indeed, he begins to speak above the third heaven, as it is lawful to initiate the elect souls in the mysteries there. For I know what is in Plato (for the examples from the barbarian philosophy, which are many, are suggested now by the composition which, in accordance with promises previously given, waits the suitable time). For doubting, in Timaoeus, whether we ought to regard several worlds as to be understood by many heavens, or this one, he makes no distinction in the names, calling the world and heaven by the same name. But the words of the statement are as follows: "Whether, then, have we rightly spoken of one heaven, or of many and infinite? It were more correct to say one, if indeed it was created according to the model." Further, in the Epistle of the Romans to the Corinthians it is written, "An ocean illimitable by men and the worlds after it." Consequently, therefore, the noble apostle exclaims, "Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!"

(11) If, then, abstracting all that belongs to bodies and things called incorporeal, we cast ourselves into the greatness of Christ, and thence advance into immensity by holiness, we may reach somehow to the conception of the Almighty, knowing not what He is, but what He is not. And form and motion, or standing, or a throne, or place, or right hand or left, are not at all to be conceived as belonging to the Father of the universe, although it is so written.

(3) This, then, the theologians distinctly shew (viz.) that the subordinate Orders of the Heavenly Beings are taught by the superior, in due order, the deifying sciences; and that those who are higher than all are illuminated from Godhead itself, as far as permissible, in revelations of the Divine mysteries. For they introduce some of them as being religiously instructed, by those of a higher rank, that He, Who was raised to Heaven as Man, is Lord of the Heavenly Powers and King of Glory; and others, as questioning Jesus Himself, as desiring to be instructed in the science of His Divine work on our behalf, and Jesus Himself teaching them immediately, and shewing to them, at first hand, His beneficent work out of love to man. For "I," He says, "am speaking of righteousness and judgment of Salvation." Now I am astonished that even the first of the Beings in Heaven, and so far above all, should reverently strive after the supremely Divine illuminations, as intermediate Beings. For they do not ask directly, "Wherefore are Thy garments red? " but they first raise the question among themselves, shewing that they desire to learn, and crave the deifying knowledge, and not anticipating the illumination given after a Divine procedure. The first Hierarchy, then, of the Heavenly Minds is purified, and enlightened, and perfected, by being ministered from the very Author of initiation, through its elevation to It immediately, being filled, according to its degree, with the altogether most holy purification of the unproachable Light of the pre-perfect source of initiation, unstained indeed by any remissness, and full of primal Light, and perfected by its participation in first-given knowledge and science. But to sum up, I may say this, not inappropriately, that the reception of the supremely Divine Science is, both purification, and enlightenment, and perfecting,--purifying, as it were, from ignorance, by the knowledge of the more perfect revelations imparted to it according to fitness, and enlightening by the self-same Divine knowledge, through which it also purifies, that which did not before contemplate the things which are now made manifest through the higher illumination; and perfecting further, by the self-same Light, through the abiding science of the mysteries made clearly manifest.