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(1) Faith as also Time being double, we shall find virtues in pairs both dwelling together. For memory is related to past time, hope to future. We believe that what is past did, and that what is future will take place. And, on the other I hand, we love, persuaded by faith that the past was as it was, and by hope expecting the future. For in everything love attends the Gnostic, who knows one God. "And, behold, all things which He created were very good." He both knows and admires. Godliness adds length of life; and the fear of the Lord adds days.

(7) But if we are to consider only the present and may not call in the past to make the total, why do we not reckon so in the case of time itself, where, in fact, we do not hesitate to add the past to the present and call the total greater? Why not suppose a quantity of happiness equivalent to a quantity of time? This would be no more than taking it lap by lap to correspond with time-laps instead of choosing to consider it as an indivisible, measurable only by the content of a given instant.

There is no absurdity in taking count of time which has ceased to be: we are merely counting what is past and finished, as we might count the dead: but to treat past happiness as actually existent and as outweighing present happiness, that is an absurdity. For Happiness must be an achieved and existent state, whereas any time over and apart from the present is nonexistent: all progress of time means the extinction of all the time that has been.

Hence time is aptly described as a mimic of eternity that seeks to break up in its fragmentary flight the permanence of its exemplar. Thus whatever time seizes and seals to itself of what stands permanent in eternity is annihilated- saved only in so far as in some degree it still belongs to eternity, but wholly destroyed if it be unreservedly absorbed into time.

If Happiness demands the possession of the good of life, it clearly has to do with the life of Authentic-Existence for that life is the Best. Now the life of Authentic-Existence is measurable not by time but by eternity; and eternity is not a more or a less or a thing of any magnitude but is the unchangeable, the indivisible, is timeless Being.

We must not muddle together Being and Non-Being, time and eternity, not even everlasting time with the eternal; we cannot make laps and stages of an absolute unity; all must be taken together, wheresoever and howsoever we handle it; and it must be taken at that, not even as an undivided block of time but as the Life of Eternity, a stretch not made up of periods but completely rounded, outside of all notion of time.

(23) 'Twould have avoided hypocrisy now and misery at last. 'Twould have sought the alchemy of grace in due time; If it became broken-hearted through its own bad state, 'Twould look onward to Him that heals the broken; 'Twould look to the result and be broken-hearted Divine grace places base copper in the alembic, O adulterated gold, boast not, but see clearly The light of the judgment-day will enlighten his eyes Behold them that have regard to the ultimate result, Behold them that regard only the present,

(19) Thus, my very precious Mind, apprehend it right. This same Throne was made in Time (when the Time of his Covenant was revealed) an angelical Principality in the Mercy of God, in the holy pure Element, in the sacred Ternary, that is, in the holy Earth, wherein the Deity is substantially known; so that the whole Mercy of God (which is unmeasurable, and every where in the sacred Ternary; which is likewise so great in the holy Element, that it comprises Heaven and this World) became a Man; that is, a substantial Similitude of the Spirit of the Trinity, in which Likeness the Trinity dwells with complete fullness; and in this great angelical Throne and Principality stood in the Beginning, and from Eternity the Aspect in the infinite Multiplicity proceeding from all the Essences in the Limbus of the Father, and became truly illustrate [or manifest] in the Time of the Promise.

(60) Here was no Remedy now, neither in God, nor in any Creature; only the mere Deity of the Heart of God must enter in Ternarium Sanctum, [into the holy Ternary,] viz. into the Barmhertzigkeit, [the Mercifulness,] which is from Eternity generated out of his Holiness, wherein the eternal Wisdom, which [coming] out of the Speaking of the Word, through the Holy Ghost, stands as a Virgin before the Deity, and is the Great Wonder, and a Spirit in the Barmhertzigkeit, [the Mercifulness,] and the Mercifulness makes the holy Ternary (the holy Earth) the Essences of the Father in the Attracting to the Word, viz. the holy Constellations, as may be said in a Similitude.

(6) Right well hast thou said, for the love of JESUS. For in the love of JESUS; there shall be thine help. Love is such a power, that it maketh all thing common. Love therefore JESUS; and all thing that He hath, it is thine. He by His Godhead is maker and giver of time. He by His manhood is the very keeper of time. And He by His Godhead and His manhood together, is the truest Doomsman, and the asker of account of dispensing of time. Knit thee therefore to Him, by love and by belief, and then by virtue of that knot thou shalt be common perceiver with Him, and with all that by love so be knitted unto Him: that is to say, with our Lady Saint Mary that full was of all grace in keeping of time, with all the angels of heaven that never may lose time, and with all the saints in heaven and in earth, that by the grace of JESUS heed time full justly in virtue of love. Lo! here lieth comfort; construe thou clearly, and pick thee some profit. But of one thing I warn thee amongst all other. I cannot see who may truly challenge community thus with JESUS and His just Mother, His high angels and also with His saints; but if he be such an one, that doth that in him is with helping of grace in keeping of time. So that he be seen to be a profiter on his part, so little as is, unto the community; as each one of them doth on his.

(4) The knowledge, then, of those things which have been predicted shows a threefold result - either one that has happened long ago, or exists now, or about to be. Then the extremes either of what is accomplished or of what is hoped for fall under faith; and the present action furnishes persuasive arguments of the confirmation of both the extremes. For if, prophecy being one, one part is accomplishing and another is fulfilled; hence the truth, both what is hoped for and what is passed is confirmed. For it was first present; then it became past to us; so that the belief of what is past is the apprehension of a past event, and a hope which is future the apprehension of a future event.