(14) Yet here I do not altogether [mean or] understand the Mercurius [Mercury or Quicksilver] which is the third Principle of this created World, which the Apothecaries use, (although that has the same Virtue or Power, and is of the same Essence,) but I speak [of that] in the first Principle, viz. of the Originality of the Essence of all Essences, of God, and of the eternal unbeginning Nature, from whence the Nature of this World is generated. Although in the Originality of both of them there is no Separation; but only the outward and third Principle, the syderial and elementary Kingdom [Region or Dominion] is generated out of the first Principle by the Word and Spirit of God out of the eternal Father, out of the holy Heaven.

(48) Now, thou dear Soul, here you see in a Glass how very near God is to us, and that he himself is the Heart of all Things, and gives to all Virtue, [Power,] and Life. Here Lucifer was very heedless, and became so very proud, that when this Brimstone- Spirit in the Will of the Mind of God was created, then he would fain have flown out above the End of Nature, and would drive the Fire out above the Meekness; he would fain have had all burn in the Fire; he would have ruled [or domineered:] The Sparks of Fire in the Brimstone-Spirit elevated themselves too high; and these Spirits pleased not the Creator, or the Spirit in the Fiat, and [therefore] were not [established] Angels, although in the first Mind (when the Center was opened to the [Creation of the] Spirits) he came to help them, and [beheld] them as well as the other Angels: But they indeed generated a fiery Will, when they should have opened their Center to the Regeneration of their Minds, and so should have generated an angelical Will.

(7) Now to speak in a creaturely way, Sulphur, Mercurius, and Sal, are understood to be thus. S U L is the Soul or the Spirit that is risen up, or in a Similitude [it is] God: P H U R is the Prima Materia, or first Matter out of which the Spirit is generated, but especially the i Harshness: Mercurius has a fourfold Form in it, viz. Harshness, Bitterness, Fire, and Water: Sal is the Child that is generated from these four, and is harsh, eager, and a Cause of the Comprehensibility.

(74) Seeing then that they stood in Heaven in the Time of their Creation, therefore their Quality was also manifold; and all should have been and continued Angels, if the great Fountain Lucifer (from whence they proceeded) had not destroyed them. And so now also every one in his Fall continues in his own Essences, only the second Principle is extinguished in them; and so it is also with the Soul of Man, when the Light of God goes out in it; but so long as that shines therein, it is in Paradise, and eats of the Word of the Lord, of which shall be clearly spoken in its due Place.

(29) But in God, Angels, and in the virgin-like Souls (understand pure Souls) it is alike; where yet it is only for God. The Devil has also a Tincture, but a false One (and it stands not in the Fire) wherewith he can gripe that Man in the Heart that lets him in, as a [sly soothing] flattering false Thief, that insinuates himself, desiring to steal, concerning whom Christ warns us, that we should watch.

(59) And in this Tincture of the first Principle, the Devil tempted Man; for it is his Source, [Well-spring, or Property,] wherein he also lives. Herein he reaches into the Heart of Man, into his Soul's Essences, and leads him away from God, into the Desire to live in the sharp (viz. in the fiery) Essences, that it might be elevated above the Humility and the Meekness of the Heart of God, and above the Love and Meekness of the Creatures, [on Purpose to seem] to be the only fair and glistering Worm in the Fire-flash, and to domineer over the second Principle. And [thus] he makes the Soul of Man so extremely proud, as not to vouchsafe himself to be in the least like any Meekness, but to be like all whatsoever lives in a Quality [or Property] contrary to it.

(38) But now, nothing corrupts, [or is transitory,] but only the Spirit in the Will, and its Body in the Fiat; and the Figure remains eternally in the Shadow. And this Figure could not thus have been brought to Light and to Visibility; that it might subsist eternally, if it had not been in the Essence; but now it is also incorruptible, for in the Figure there is no Essence: The Center in the Source is broken asunder, and gone into its Ether, [Receptacle, or Air;] and the Figure does neither Good nor Evil, but it continues eternally to the [Manifestation of the] Deeds of Wonder, and the Glory of God, and for the Joy of the Angels.

(7) Thus now herein is understood, how the divine Essence in the divine Principle has wrought in the Root of the first Principle, which is the Begetter, Matrix, or Genetrix in the eternal Birth in the a Limbus, or in the original Water-Spirit; by which Operation at last, the Earth and Stones come forth. For in the second Principle, (viz. in the holy Birth,) there is only Spirit, Light, and Life; and the eternal Wisdom has wrought in the eternal inanimate Genetrix, which is void of Understanding (viz. in her own Property) before the Original of the Light; out of which came the dark Chaos, which in the Elevation of Lord Lucifer (when the Light of God departed from him, and the Fierceness of the Source of the Fire was kindled) became hard Matter, (viz. Stones and Earth,) whereupon followed the gathering together of the Earth, as also the spewing out of Lucifer from his Throne, and the creating of the third Principle; and thereupon it followed, that he was shut up in the third Principle as a Prisoner, expecting henceforth the [Judgment or] Sentence of God. Now whether it be not a Shame, Disgrace, and Irksomness to him to be so imprisoned between Paradise and this World, and not to be able to comprehend either of them, I propose it to be considered.

(3) For he took not one Lump after another, or many Lumps together, and made Beasts of them, that is not likely; and it is much more a bestial than a human Thought. But, as is mentioned before, after that the Devil was fallen with his Legions, (who had his Throne in the Place of this World, standing bodily after the Manner of a Spirit, in the first Principle, and thoroughly enlightened all over with the second Principle, truly dwelling in Paradise, and in the divine Virtue, [or Power,] and yet with Pride fell from the Light of God, and catched at his own Mother, the Root of the Fire, thinking to domineer over the Meekness of the Heart of God) then his Dwelling continued to be the first Principle in the fiery dark Matrix; and God created the Out-Birth of the Matrix, for a Principle; and in the eternal Matrix, in the longing Will, he opened the Center or Birth of Life; and there (after the manner of the Deity, as the Eternal Deity from Eternity has always generated,) arose [and sprung up] the third Principle, in which the Deity stands as it were hid, yet forming, imagining, or imprinting itself powerfully in all Things; which is incomprehensible and unprofitable for the Devil.