(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.

(2) That heavenly Person is without body, he is both without and within, not produced, without breath and without mind, pure, higher than the high Imperishable.

(79) Thou must know that no Stone or Rock can keep or retain his Body, he pierces and penetrates through all Things, and breaks nothing; he comprehends all Things, and the Thing comprehends not him; he comprehends this World, and the World comprehends not him; he is hurt by nothing, the whole Fulness of the Deity is in him, and is not included in any Thing; he appears a Creature, in our human Form, in the same Dimensions that our Bodies have, and yet his Body has no End or Limit; he is the whole princely Throne of the whole Principle.

(1) The hostile opposition, therefore, in the things that are now proposed, may be easily dissolved by demonstrating the dignity of wholes with respect to parts, and by recalling to your recollection the exempt transcendency of the Gods above men. But what I mean is this, that the soul, which ranks as a whole, presides over all the mundane body, and that the celestial Gods ascend, as into a vehicle, into a celestial body, neither receiving any injury from thence, nor any impediment in their intellections. But to a partial soul, the communion with body is noxious in both these respects. If, therefore, some one perceiving this, should nevertheless introduce such a doubt as the following, that if the body is a bond to our soul, it will also be a bond to the soul of the universe, and that if a partial soul is converted to the body on account of generation, in a similar manner the power of the Gods is converted to generation; in answer to this every one may reply, that he who thus doubts does not know how much superior beings transcend men, and wholes parts. Since, therefore, the objections pertain to things different from each other, they do not produce any ambiguity.

(17) Now if we will lift up our Minds, and seek after the Heaven wherein God dwells, we cannot say that God dwells only above the Stars, and has inclosed himself with the Firmament which is made out of the Waters, in which none can enter except it be opened (like a Window) for him; with which Thoughts Men are altogether befooled [and bewildered.] Neither can we say (as some suppose) that God the Father and the Son are only with Angels in the uppermost inclosed Heaven, and rule only here in this World by the Holy Ghost, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. All these Thoughts are void of the very Knowledge of God. For then God should be divided and circumscriptive, like the Sun that moves aloft above us, and sends its Light and Virtue to us, whereby the whole Deep becomes light and active all over.

(67) We know that the Body without the Spirit is a Thing that lies still; for though the Body of Christ (which the holy Element generated in the P Mercy) is from God, yet the Mobility and Life stands only in the Deity; and in us Men in the Spirit of the Soul, and in the Spirit of the great World, which are unseparated in this Body upon Earth.

(30) Beloved Reason, leave off your Thoughts, for with these Thoughts and Conceits you know not God, nor the Eternity. Then how will you with such Thoughts know the Similitude which God generated out of the eternal Mind? It has here been several Times mentioned to you, that the Mind (which yet is the greatest Essence in Man) does not stand in a Source.

(2) For ever when the Memory is occupied with any bodily thing be it taken to never so good an end, yet thou art beneath thyself in this working, and without any soul. And ever when thou feelest thy Memory occupied with the subtle conditions of the powers of thy soul and their workings in ghostly things, as be vices or virtues, of thyself, or of any creature that is ghostly and even with thee in nature, to that end that thou mightest by this work learn to know thyself in furthering of perfection: then thou art within thyself, and even with thyself. But ever when thou feelest thy Memory occupied with no manner of thing that is bodily or ghostly, but only with the self substance of God, as it is and may be, in the proof of the work of this book: then thou art above thyself and beneath thy God.

(16) And now as we understand, that Man (with the Similitude wherein God dwells) is not merely at Home in this World, much Hurts, or moves. less in the stinking Carcase, so it is manifest (in that we are so very blind as to Paradise) that our first Parents (with their Spirit) are gone out of the heavenly Paradise into the Spirit of this World, where then the Spirit of this World instantly captivated their Body, and made it earthly, so that Body and Soul are perished; and now we have the pure Element no more for our Body, but the Out-Birth, (viz. the four Elements, with the Dominion of the Stars) and the Sun only is the Light of the Body; also this Body does not belong to the Deity. God does not discover himself in the stinking Carcase [or Corpse,] but in the holy Man, in the pure Image which he created in the Beginning.

(2) Now, amongst the profane, some illogically think to go to a non-existence; others that the bodily blending with their proper souls will be severed once for all, as unsuitable to them in a Divine life and blessed lots, not considering nor being sufficiently instructed in Divine science, that our most Godlike life in Christ has already begun. But others assign to souls union with other bodies, committing, as I think, this injustice to them, that, after (bodies) have laboured together with the godly souls, and have reached the goal of their most Divine course, they relentlessly deprive them of their righteous retributions. And others (I do not know how they have strayed to conceptions of such earthly tendency) say, that the most holy and blessed repose promised to the devout is similar to our life in this world, and unlawfully reject, for those who are equal to the Angels, nourishments appropriate to another kind of life. None of the most religious men, however, will ever fall into such errors as these; but, knowing that their whole selves will receive the Christ-like inheritance, when they have come to the goal of this present life, they see more clearly their road to incorruption already become nearer, and extol the gifts of the Godhead, and are filled with a Divine satisfaction, no longer fearing the fall to a worse condition, but knowing well that they will hold firmly and everlastingly the good things already acquired. Those, however, who are full of blemishes, and unholy stains, even though they have attained to some initiation, yet, of their own accord, have, to their own destruction, rejected this from their mind, and have rashly followed their destructive lusts, to them when they have come to the end of their life here, the Divine regulation of the Oracles will no longer appear as before, a subject of scorn, but, when they have looked with different eyes upon the pleasures of their passions destroyed, and when they have pronounced blessed the holy life from which they thoughtlessly fell away, they are, piteously and against their will, separated from this present life, conducted to no holy hope, by reason of their shameful life.

(6) The heavens are everywhere alike remote from earth, so should the soul be remote from all earthly things alike so as not to be nearer to one than another. It should keep the same attitude of aloofness in love and hate, in possession and renouncement, that is, it should be simultaneously dead, resigned and lifted up. The heavens are pure and clear without shadow of stain, out of space and out of time. Nothing corporeal is found there. Their revolutions are incredibly swift and independent of time, though time depends on them. Nothing hinders the soul so much in attaining to the knowledge of God as time and place.

Therefore, if the soul is to know God, it must know Him outside time and place, since God is neither in this or that, but One and above them. If the soul is to see God, it must look at nothing in time; for while the soul is occupied with time or place or any image of the kind, it cannot recognize God. If it is to know Him, it must have no fellowship with nothingness. Only he knows God who recognizes that all creatures are nothingness. For, if one creature be set over against another, it may appear to be beautiful and somewhat, but if it be set over against God, it is nothing.

I say moreover: If the soul is to know God it must forget itself and lose itself, for as long as it contemplates self, it cannot contemplate God. When it has lost itself and everything in God, it finds itself again in God when it attains to the knowledge of Him, and it finds also everything which it had abandoned complete in God. If I am to know the highest good, and the everlasting Godhead, truly, I must know them as they are in themselves apart from creation. If I am to know real existence, I must know it as it is in itself, not as it is parceled out in creatures.

(7) Men must not think, that Man before his Fall had bestial Members to propagate with, but heavenly [Members,] nor any as Man has in his Body, does not belong to the Holy Trinity in Paradise, but to the Earth; it must go again into its Ether. But Man was created immortal, and also holy, like the Angels; and seeing he was created out of the Limbus, therefore he was pure. Now in what manner he is, and out of what he was made, it follows further.

(6) And for this reason it is that I bid thee put down such a sharp subtle thought, and cover him with a thick cloud of forgetting, be he never so holy nor promise he thee never so well for to help thee in thy purpose. For why, love may reach to God in this life, but not knowing. And all the whiles that the soul dwelleth in this deadly body, evermore is the sharpness of our understanding in beholding of all ghostly things, but most specially of God, mingled with some manner of fantasy; for the which our work should be unclean. And unless more wonder were, it should lead us into much error.

(48) You must know, that Christ, while he lived upon the Earth, and all we that are new-born in him, have and carry the heavenly Flesh and Blood in the earthly [Man,] and we carry it also in the new Man, in the Body of Christ. And when we die thus in the old earthly Body, then we live (in the new Body) in the Body of Jesus Christ, and spring up in him out of Death; and our Springing up is our Paradise, where our Essences spring up in God, and the earthly is swallowed up in Death, and we put on our Lord Jesus Christ, not only in the Faith and Spirit, but in the Virtue [and Power] of the Body, in our heavenly Flesh and Blood; and so we live to God the Father in Christ his Son, and the Holy Ghost confirms all our Doings; for all what we shall do, it is God does it in us.

(19) But before everything (else), know your birth. Know yourself, that is, from what substance you are, or from what race, or from what species. Understand that you have come into being from three races: from the earth, from the formed, and from the created. The body has come into being from the earth with an earthly substance, but the formed, for the sake of the soul, has come into being from the thought of the Divine. The created, however, is the mind, which has come into being in conformity with the image of God. The divine mind has substance from the Divine, but the soul is that which he (God) formed for their own hearts. For I think that it (the soul) exists as wife of that which has come into being in conformity with the image, but matter is the substance of the body, which has come into being from the earth.

(21) But if thou lockest up thy soul within thy body, and dost debase it, saying: I nothing know; I nothing can; I fear the sea; I cannot scale the sky; I know not who I was, who I shall be - what is there [then] between [thy] God and thee? For thou canst know naught of things beautiful and good so long as thou dost love thy body and art bad. The greatest bad there is, is not to know God's Good; but to be able to know [Good], and will, and hope, is a Straight Way, the Good's own [Path], both leading there and easy. If thou but settest thy foot thereon, 'twill meet thee everywhere, 'twill everywhere be seen, both where and when thou dost expect it not - waking, sleeping, sailing, journeying, by night, by day, speaking, [and] saying naught. For there is naught that is not image of the Good.

(32) Thus now we may know, that God is All in All, and fills All, as it is written; Am not I he thatfilleth all Things? And therefore we know, that the holy pure Element in Paradise is his Dwelling, which is the second Principle, and is in all Things, and yet the Thing (as a dead dark Out-Birth) knows it [the second Principle] not, as the Pot [knows not] its Potter, so also that [Thing] neither comprehends nor apprehends that [second Principle.] For I cannot say (when I take hold of, or comprehend any Thing) that I take hold of the holy Element, together with the Paradise and the Deity, but I comprehend the Out-Birth, the Kingdom of this World, viz. the third Principle and the Substance thereof, and I move [or stir] not the Deity therewith. And so we are to know [and understand] that the holy new Man [is thus] hidden in the old, and not separated, but in the temporal Death.

(38) And it highly concerns us to know and apprehend, that when the Seed is sown in the Matrix, and that it is drawn together by the Fiat (when the Stars and the outward Elements set themselves in [the Dominion,] and that the Love and Meekness is extinguished; for there comes to be a fierce Substance in the Stopping [or Congealing] of the Tincture) that before the Kindling of the Light of Life, in the Child, there is no heavenly Creature. And although kit be figured [or shaped] with all the Forms [or Parts] of the Body, yet notwithstanding the heavenly Image is not therein, but the bestial. And if that Body perishes [corrupts, or breaks] before the Kindling of the Spirit of the Soul in the springing up of the Life, then nothing of this Figure appears before God on the Day of the Restitution, but its Shadow and Shape; for it has yet had no Spirit.

(20) Behold what power, what swiftness, thou dost have! And canst thou do all of these things, and God not [do them]? Then, in this way know God; as having all things in Himself as thoughts, the whole Cosmos itself. If, then, thou dost not make thyself like unto God, thou canst not know Him. For like is knowable unto like [alone]. Make, [then,] thyself to grow to the same stature as the Greatness which transcends all measure; leap forth from every body; transcend all time; become Eternity ; and [thus] shalt thou know God. Conceiving nothing is impossible unto thyself, think thyself deathless and able to know all - all arts, all sciences, the way of every life. Become more lofty than all height, and lower than all depth. Collect into thyself all senses of [all] creatures - of fire, [and] water, dry and moist. Think that thou art at the same time in every place - in earth, in sea, in sky; not yet begotten, in the womb, young, old, [and] dead, in after-death conditions. And if thou knowest all these things at once - times, places, doings, qualities, and quantities; thou canst know God.

(6) Now rejoice, all ye powers of my soul, that you are so united with God that no one may separate you from Him. I cannot fully praise nor love Him therefore must I die, and cast myself into the divine void, till I rise from non-existence to existence. If I should remain entombed in flesh till the judgment day and suffer the pains of hell, that would be for me a small thing to bear for my beloved Lord Jesus Christ, if I had the certainty at last of not being separated from Him.

While I am here, He is in me; after this life, I am in Him. All things are therefore possible to me, if I am united to Him Who can do all things. Previously I could not distinguish whether we were divine by nature or by grace. Then came Jesus and enlightened me so that I recognized in the Divine Nature Three Persons, and that the Father was the Bringer-Forth of all things, as St James says, "every perfect gift cometh down from the Father of lights."