(59) And then they looked one upon another, and were ashamed one before another, and they were afraid of the Wrath [or Severity] that entered into them, for it was the Anger of God; and thus they were captivated by the first Principle, as by the Abyss of Hell, which held Adam and Eve captive in their Souls in the eternal [Part;] for it sprung up with Terror, Fear, and Doubt, concerning the Kingdom of God; and they could have no Comfort, [in that Condition,] for they saw the Paradise no more, but the Garden in Eden; so also they had lost the Deity, they could set no Will [or Desire] into it, for the Wrath and Doubt stood in the Way.

(24) Or what thinkest thou, if thy Twig be thus very dry and withered, and that thou must eternally swelter in the Anger of God, where instantly thy human Image will be taken away, and thou wilt be in the a Shape of the most abominable Beasts, Worms, and Serpents, all according to thy Deeds and Practice here, where then all thy Deeds will stand in the Figure in the Tincture eternally before thy Eyes, and will gnaw thee sufficiently, so that thou wilt continually think, if thou hadst not done this or that, thou shouldst have attained the Grace of God? Thy Mocking stands before thy Eyes, and thou art ashamed to let the least good Thought into thy Soul; for Good is as an Angel before thee, and thou darest not (for great Shame) so much as to touch it with thy Mind, much less look upon it. But thou must eternally devour into thyself thy great Scorning, with all thy Vices and Sins, and thou must eternally despair; and though thou thinkest to go forth after Abstinence, yet the Light strikes thee down again, and so thou goest but forth aloft (in thy devouring fretting Worm, in thyself) without the Thrones of God; and it is with thee, as with one who stands upon a high stony Cliff of a Rock, and would cast himself into a bottomless Gulf; and the further he sees, the deeper he falls. Thus thy own Sins, Scornings, Deridings, Cursings in Contempt of God, are thy Hell-fire, which gnaws thee eternally; this I speak in the Word of Life.

(96) Then the Devil mocked the Image, and Hell opened its The Soul. Jaws wide, and had the Bridle in their Essences, and continually drew them therewith towards the hellish Fire of the fierce Wrath; and then there was Trembling and Horror in the Mind, and they could not reach the Love of God. Heaven was their Enemy, no Angel came near them, but the horrible Devils, they showed themselves, and hopped, crying, Ho, ho! we have gotten the Game, we are Princes over Men, we will torment them soundly, because they would have possessed our Throne; we should have been their Footstool, and now we are their Judges; what Care we for God, he dwells not in our Kingdom; why has he thrust us out? we will be sure to wreak our Spleen upon his Image. The most pleasant, and most lovely Gate [or Explanation] of the Promise of the Treader upon the Serpent, highly to be considered.

(51) To conclude, God will have no fiery Spirit in Paradise, they must remain in the first Principle, in the eternal Darkness; if they had continued as God had created them (when the Meekness shined [or appeared] to them) and had put the Center of their Minds into the Meekness, then the Light of God should for ever have shined through them, and they should have eaten of the Verbum Domini [the Word of the Lord;] and they should with the Root of their Original have stood in the first Principle, like God the Father himself, and with the Will in the Mind [they should have stood] in the second Principle: Thus they should have had a paradisical Source, [Quality or Property,] and an angelical Will; and they should have been friendly in the Limbus of Heaven, and in the Love of God.

(28) Yet it could not be (how vigorously soever it was sought after) that Man (in his own Power) could enter into Paradise. And therefore poor captive Man must sit in this World in the Devil's murdering Den; where now the Devil has built his Chapel close by the Christian Church, and has quite destroyed the Love of Paradise, and has in the Stead of it set up mere covetous, proud, self-willed, [or self-conceited,] faithless, sturdy, malicious Blasphemers, Thieves and Murderers, which lift themselves up against Heaven and Paradise, and have built themselves a Kingdom according to the Dominion of the fierce sour [Stars or] Constellations, wherein they domineer (with Silver and Gold) and consume the Sweat one of another; whosoever is but able, oppresses the other to the Ground. And though he flies before him, yet then he only puts forth his Dragon's Tongue, and spits Fire upon him; he terrifies him with his harsh Voice, and plagues him Day and Night.

(95) And now when these two, thus captivated by the Devil and this World, stood before God with Fear and great Horror, and felt the Anger of God, and the severe Judgment; then the Heart of God, which had made them; pitied them, and it looked whether there was any [Remedy or] Counsel that might help poor Man, and redeem [or deliver] him from the Bands of the eternal [Fierceness or] Wrath, and from the mortal Body of this World. But there was nothing found, neither in Heaven, nor in this World, that could make them free; there was no Principality or Throne- Angel, which had the Ability to do it; all was lost, they were in the eternal Judgment of the temporal and eternal Death. For the first Principle had captivated them, in the Spirit of the Soul, and qualified [or mingled] with the Soul; the Kingdom of Heaven in the Light was shut up, [and there was a firm Enclosure] of a whole Principle between, and 1 it could not reach the Kingdom of Heaven again, except it were born of God again; otherwise there was no Council, nor Help, nor Refuge in any Thing at all.

(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.

(23) All shall remain in the Shadow, and every Thing in its own Source [or Property;] therefore it will be an eternal Shame to the Wicked, that they shall see in the Eternity all their Works and Words, as a menstruous Cloth, which shall stick full of the Wrath of God, and shall burn, according to their Essence, and according to their here kindled Source [or Property.]

(105) Yet God would not have it so, but kkindled the Anger in Cain, which rested before in the swelled Kingdom of the four Elements, and was only climbed up in great and mighty Joy, whereas Cain did not know the Anger, nor understand any Thing of it; only the Essences of the Soul knew that they dealt falsly, but they knew not the fierce Source in the Kindling of the Fire, till they went forth from the Center of God into the Horror, Trembling, and Crying; for they were gone out from Or Wickedness. God, and neither saw nor felt the heavenly Source any more; and therefore they despaired, because they found [or felt] themselves in the Source of the Wrath; and the Body with all its Essences cried; My Sins are greater than that they can be forgiven.

(47) On the contrary, many a one is in great Anguish, and longs after it, and generates very painfully, he would fain have uit; but then the Devil rushes upon him, and stirs up Irksomeness [Vexation] and Discontent, and also overwhelms him with great Sins, so that he knows not himself, and then dejects him with Impatience and Doubting; and his Heart stands continually in Anguish, it would fain get out of Evil, and endeavours continually for Abstinence or Forbearance, many Times with Groans, Sighing, and Longing, but then the Devil holds his Sins before him, and bars up the Door of the Grace of God, that he might despair.

(25) Would, then, that these heretics would learn and be set right by these notes, and turn to the sovereign God! But if, like the deaf serpents, they listen not to the song called new, though very old, may they be chastised by God, and undergo paternal admonitions previous to the Judgment, till they become ashamed and repent, but not rush through headlong unbelief, and precipitate themselves into judgment.

(6) Our Divines set themselves Hand and Foot with Might and Main, with their utmost Endeavour, by Persecution and Reproach, against this, [and say,] that Men must not [dare to] search into the deep Grounds what God is; Men must not search nor curiously pry into the Deity. But if I should speak plainly what this Trick of theirs is, it is the Dung and Filth wherewith they cover and hide the Devil, and cloak the injected Malice and Wickedness of the Devil in Man, so that neither the Devil, nor the Anger of God, nor the evil Beast in Man, can be discerned.

(94) But because he beguiled Adam and Eve with his Sugar, therefore God has prepared such a Dwelling-House for him, as Adam lets forth (from the earthly Sugar) at the nethermost Exit; and that shall be left for him at the Corruption of the Earth, when it goes into its Ether; and then that pleasant Smell of the Stink of Sin and Abominations (in the Kingdom of the fierce Wrath) shall remain for him, and that Sugar he shall eat eternally, and frame his Will continually therein to get other Sugar in the i Furnace of the Fire, and then he may make that ready for him, as may best suit with his Palate; at which he quakes and trembles, when he hears the Spirit declare such Things. And hereby it is also signified to all the Ungodly, that they shall also eat the same Sugar eternally, which they have continually baked here, with their Blaspheming, Cursing, Covetousness, Scorn, Backbiting, [Thorny-taunting,] Murdering, Robbing, and taking the Sweat of the Needy and Miserable to maintain their haughty stately Pride.

(69) Besides, the Kingdom of Hell, and of [fierce] Wrath, always gape after the Soul, and set their Jaws wide open to devour the captive Soul; which is held fast fettered with two strong Chains; the one of the Kingdom of Hell; the other of the Kingdom of this World; and it is continually led by the heavy, lumpish, bestial, and sickly Body, as a Thief who is often led to the Place of Execution, and still by a Petition reprieved, and laid in Prison again, and the poor Soul must lie thus in Prison the whole Time of the Body; where the Devil on the one Side very suddenly rushes upon it with his devouring Fierceness, Wrath, and Malice, and would carry it into the Abyss. Then instantly [it is beat upon by] the glistering [flattering] World, with Pomp, Bravery, Covetousness, and Voluptuousness of Perdition; presenting [again come upon it] Sickness and Fear, and it is continually trembling and quaking; and when Man goes but in the Dark, how is it amazed, and continually afraid that the Executioner will take it, and tdo Execution upon it! The Gate [or Explanation] of the great Sin, and Contrariety of Will against God, in Man.

(3) But because there are two of these Inns, which are eternal without End and Expulsion; the one standing in eternal Joy (in great Brightness and Perfection) in mere Love and Meekness; but the other in great Perplexity, Anguish, Misery, Distress, Hunger, and Thirst, where never any Refreshment from the Love of God comes; therefore it is very necessary that we learn, with great Earnestness, to know the true Way of Entrance into the eternal Joy, that we may not with the Devil's Dogs howl eternally in the anguishing Inn.

(43) The eternal Will is incorruptible [or intransitory,] and unchangeable [or unalterable;] for the Heart of God is generated out of it, which is the End of the Nature and of the Willing. If the Spirits of the Source [or Torment] had put their imagination, and their desiring Will a forward into the Light of Meekness, into the End of Nature, they should have continued Angels; but seeing they out of Pride would fain be above the Meekness, and above the End of Nature, and awakened the Center, they found nothing more; for from Eternity there had been nothing more [than the End of Nature;] and therefore they awakened the Center of the Source [or Torment] in themselves. The same they now have, and they were thrust out of the Light into the Darkness.

(24) For there is no Light, neither of this World, nor of God, but its own fiery Kindling in itself, and that is its Light, which stands in the horrible Flash of the Grimness, which also is an Enmity to itself; yet the Source is very unlike, all according to that which the Soul has here burdened itself with. For such a Soul there is no [Remedy or] Counsel, it cannot come into the Light of God; and although St. Peter had left many thousand Keys upon Earth, yet none of them could open the Heaven for it; for it is separated from the Band of Jesus Christ, and there is between it and the Deity, a whole Birth y; and it is as with the zrich Man, where those that would come from thence to us cannot. And this must be understood of the unrepenting Souls, which thus in Hypocrisy [or Show of Holiness] depart from the Body, being unregenerated.

(13) For from thenceforward they could not speak (with Him) nor lift up their eyes to heaven for shame of their sins for which they had been condemned.

(106) And here is apparently seen the Glass of the Abyss of Hell, and [of the] eternal Despair; when the Anger of God rises up in the Source, that the Malice [and Wickedness] is made stirring, and there begins Trembling, Galling, and Crying, and Despair in itself as to God; there the Soul seeks Abstinence in the Kingdom of this World, and finds mnone; and then it leaves the Kingdom of this World also, and runs also into the Originality into the Root of the eternal Birth, and seeks Abstinence, and yet finds nothing; and then casts itself into the abominable Deep, supposing to reach the Original of the Abstinence, or the Gate of the Breaking in; but it mounts only above the Heaven, out (into the most outermost) into the fierce [wrathful, grim] Eternity.

(10) In those days they shall be led off to the abyss of fire: 〈and〉 to the torment and the prison in which they shall be confined for ever. And whosoever shall be condemned and destroyed will from thenceforth be bound together with them to the end of all generations.