(44) Thou dear Soul, thus saith the high Spirit to thee; yield Infusion. up thy Mind here, and I will show it thee. Behold, what does comprehend thy Will, or wherein consists thy Life? If thou sayest, in Water and Flesh: No, it consists in the Fire, in the Warmth. If the Warmth was not, then thy Body would be stiff [with Cold,] and the Water would dry away; therefore the Mind and the Life consists in the Fire.

(1) BUT now thou askest me, how thou mayest destroy this naked witting and feeling of thine own being. For peradventure thou thinkest that an it were destroyed, all other lettings were destroyed: and if thou thinkest thus, thou thinkest right truly. But to this I answer thee and I say, that without a full special grace full freely given of God, and thereto a full according ableness to receive this grace on thy part, this naked witting and feeling of thy being may on nowise be destroyed. And this ableness is nought else but a strong and a deep ghostly sorrow.

(50) Now if you ask; Why came not the Love of God to help them again? No, Friend, their Mind had elevated itself, even to the End of Nature, and it would fain have gone out above the Light of God; their Mind was become a kindled Source of Fire in the fierce Wrath, the Meekness of God cannot enter into it, the Brimstone-Spirit burns eternally: In this Manner he is an Enemy to God, he cannot be helped; for the Center is burning in the Flash: His Will is still, that he would fain go out above the Meekness of God; neither can he get [frame, or create] any other [Will,] for his Source has revealed the End of Nature in the Fire, and he remains an unquenchable Source of Fire; the Heart of God in the Meekness, and the Principle of God, is close shut up from him, and that even to Eternity.

(3) It is said to thee, that the Wood [or Fuel] of thy Soul shall burn in the last Fire, and that thy Soul shall remain to be Ashes in the Fire, and thy Body shall appear like black Soot. Why wilt thou then stand in a Wilderness, yea in a Rock where there is no Water? How then will thy Tree grow again? O! Or Saints and holy People. what great Misery it is that we are ignorant in what P Soil we grow, and what Kind of Essences we draw to us, seeing our Fruit shall appear and be tasted, and that which is pleasant shall stand upon God's Table; and the other shall be cast to the Devil's Swine. Therefore let it move you; to look that you grow in the Ground or Soil of Christ, and bring forth Fruit that may be set upon God's Table, which Fruit never perishes, but continually springs, and the more it is eaten of, the pleasanter it is. How wilt thou rejoice in the Lord!

(101) To make these, I say, pure and clean, And, to please God, have quenched those fires, So that the fire of lust, that erst breathed flame, Has become a holy garden and a guiding light, Since you have turned the fire of wrath to meekness, And the darkness of ignorance to shining knowledge, Since you have turned the fire of greed into bounty, And the vile thorns of malice into a rose-garden; Since you have quenched all these fires of your own For my sake, so that those poisons are now pure sweets;

(91) Which say, "See me a man destined to the fire; I am a part of the fire, and go to join my whole; Not a light, so that I should join the Source of light." Kill thine own lust and give life to the world; It has killed its lord, reduce it to servitude. That claimant of the cow is thy lust; Beware! That slayer of the cow is thy reason; Go! Reason is a poor captive, and ever cries to God On what depends its getting meat without toiling?

(45) But what is the Fire? First, there is the Darkness, the Hardness, the eternal Cold, and the Dryness, where there is nothing else but an eternal Hunger. Then how comes the Fire to be? Dear Soul, here [in the Fire's coming to be] the Spirit of God (viz. the eternal Light) comes to help the Hunger; for the Hunger exists also from the Light: Because the divine Virtue beholds itself in the Darkness, therefore the Darkness is desirous [and longing] after the Light; and the Desiring is the Will.

(12) When a house is burning, and the fire may fall upon the next house and seize upon the straw and like stuff within it, we carry this stuff away from it; and in like manner must we straightway cast out the things by touch whereof the spirit is inflamed with the fire of wrath, for fear lest the substance of our merit be consumed.

(3) See by ensample. He that is thy deadly enemy, an thou hear him so afraid that he cry in the height of his spirit this little word “fire,” or this word “out”; yet without any beholding to him for he is thine enemy, but for pure pity in thine heart stirred and raised with the dolefulness of this cry, thou risest up—yea, though it be about midwinter’s night—and helpest him to slack his fire, or for to still him and rest him in his distress. Oh, Lord! since a man may be made so merciful in grace, to have so much mercy and so much pity of his enemy, notwithstanding his enmity, what pity and what mercy shall God have then of a ghostly cry in soul, made and wrought in the height and the deepness, the length and the breadth of his spirit; the which hath all by nature that man hath by grace? And much more, surely without comparison, much more mercy will He have; since it is, that that thing that is so had by nature is nearer to an eternal thing than that which is had by grace.