(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.

(15) But Lord Lucifer would (in the Creation) have fain been above the Meekness of the Heart of God, above the End of Nature; therefore he would fain also have persuaded the Son of the Virgin to fly without Wings, above the End of Nature, in Pride; of which shall be handled in its due Place at large. I have brought this in thus, but in brief, that my Writing may be the better understood, and how it stands with [or upon] the Ground, [or Foundation] of the Scripture, and is not any new Thing, neither shall there be any Thing new [in them,] but only the true Knowledge, in the Holy Ghost, of the Essence of all Essences. Of Adam 's Sleep.

(67) This [Sport of Love] was spoiled by Lucifer himself, (who is so called, because of the extinguishing of his Light, and of being cast out of his Throne,) who was a Prince and King over many Legions, but is become a Devil, and has lost his beautiful, [fair, bright,] and glorious Image. For he, as well as other Angels, was created out of the eternal Nature, out of the eternal indissoluble Band, and [has also] stood in Paradise, also felt and seen the i Birth of the Holy Deity, the Birth of the second Principle, of the Heart of God, and the Confirmation of the Holy Ghost; his Food should have been of the Word of the Lord, and therein he should have continued an Angel.

(22) Yet if the Soul elevates its Imagination forward into the Light, in Meekness and Comeliness or Humility, and does not (as Lucifer did) use the strong Power of its Fire, in its Qualification, [or Breathing,] then it will be fed by the Word of the Lord, and gets Virtue, Power, Life, and Strength, in the Word of the Lord, which is the Heart of God; and its own original strong [fierce wrathful] Source of the Birth of the eternal Life becomes paradisical, exceeding pleasant, friendly, humble, and sweet, wherein the Rejoicing and the Fountain of the eternal Angel and a Child of God, and it beholds the eternal Generating of the indissoluble Band; and thereof it has Ability to speak, (for it is its own Essence or Substance,) but [it is] not [able to speak] of the infinite Generating, for that has neither Beginning nor End.

(10) Seeing then that the eternal Wisdom of God (viz. in the chaste Virgin of the divine Virtue) had discovered itself in the Principle of this World, in which Place the great Prince Lucifer stood in the Heaven, in the second Principle, therefore the same Discovering was eternal, and God desired to shed forth the Similitude out of the Essences, which the Fiat created according to the Kind of every Essence, that they should (after the Breaking [or Dissolution] of the outward Substance) be a Figure and Image in Paradise, and a Shadow of this Substance. 1 1. And that there should go nothing in Vain out of the Substance of God, therefore God created Beasts, Fowls, Fishes, Worms, Trees and Herbs out of all Essences; and besides [created] also figured Spirits out of the Quinta Essentia, in the Elements, that so, after the completing of the Time (when the Out-Birth [shall] go into the Ether) they should appear before him, and that his eternal Wisdom in his Works of Wonder might he known.