(7) And this is the very Reason, because the Devil smells the Matter, and therefore he hinders it, that his Kingdom might not be revealed, but that he might continue to be the Great Prince [of the World still.] For otherwise, if his Kingdom was known, Men might fly from him. Where is it more needful for him to oppose, than on that Part where his Enemy may break in? He therefore covers the Hearts, Minds, Thoughts, and Senses of the Divines; he leads them into Covetousness, Pride, and Wantonness, so that they stand amazed with Fear and Horror at the Light of God, and therefore they shut it up, for they are naked, nay they grudge the Light to those that see it; this is rightly called the Service and Worship of the Devil.

(1) NOW the highest Question is, What that is which caused the Mind of the Devil so to elevate itself, and that so great a Number of them are fallen in their High-mindedness, [or Pride?] Behold, when God set the Fiat in the Will, and would create Angels, then the Spirit first separated all Qualities, after that Manner, as now you see there are many Kinds of Stars, and so the Fiat created them [several.] Then there were created the princely [Angels,] and the throne Angels, according to every Quality, (as hard, sour, bitter, cold, fierce, soft, and so on zin the Essences, till to the End of Nature) out of the Source of the Fire;

(93) And now when the Kingdom of Hell had this mighty Blow, and was thus overcome, then the Devil lost his Right in the Soul; yet he said in himself, Thou hast a Right in the earthly Body, and somewhat was permitted to him; and then he took the Body with the Soul, and set them upon the Pinnacle of the Temple, and said, Cast thyself down (for thou art powerful and canst do all Things) and then the People shall see that thou art God, and hast overcome; this is the right fluttering Spirit, wherewith the Devil would fain always fly above the Thrones over the Deity, and yet goes but in himself into the hellish Fire, and apprehends not the Deity.

(63) He [the Devil] supposed, [saying;] The Kingdom of this World is thine, thou shalt sport thyself according to thy Power with the Image of Man, which should have possessed thy Throne, his Spirit is in thy Kingdom; and so [the Devil] mocked God in his Mind, [saying.;] Where is now thy noble Image, which thou didst create to rule over my Throne? Am not I Lord of the great Might of the Fire? I will rule over thy Throne, the Might [or Strength] and Virtue is mine: I fly up above the Thrones of Virtue and Strength, and no Might [or Power] can withstand me.

(16) Now this King was promised of God, that he should possess the Gates of his Enemies, and should lead his Enemies captive; and the Devils are these Enemies. Now dost thou conceive, that when this Creature bound the Devils at Jerusalem, and as a confined Creature that did reach no further, did lead them captive, who then bound them at Rome? Thou sayest; his Deity. O no! that was not its Office; the Devils are however in the Father's most internal Root; in his Anger. A Creature must only do it, who was so great as could be every where with the Devils.

(66) It is not without a Cause, that Christ calls the Devil a Prince of this World, for he is so, according to the first Principle, according to the Kingdom of Wrath, and continues so to Eternity. But he is not so according to the Kingdom of the four Elements and Stars; for if he had full Power in that, then there would be no vegetative [Fruit] nor living Creature upon the Earth. He cannot master the P Exit of the four Elements; for he is in the Originality, and there is a [whole] Principle between; only when the Constellations awaken the fierce Wrath of the Fire, in the Elements, as in a tempestuous Storm, then he is Master- Juggler [in Mischief,] and rejoices himself [therein.] Though indeed he has no Power there neither, except it be permitted him from the Anger of God, then he is the Hangman [or Executioner,] and executes the Right as a Servant [Minister or Officer;] but not as a Judge, but as an Executioner.

(35) What then moved the Devil to be angry, and evil? What is the first Matter [of it] in him, seeing he was created out of the original eternal Spirit? Or from whence is the Original of Hell, wherein the Devils shall remain for ever, when this World, with the Stars, and Elements, Earth, and Stones, shall perish in the End?

(37) Now you can here produce nothing, more, that God should ever use any Matter out of which to create the Devil, for then the Devil might justify himself, that he made him evil, or of evil Matter. For God created him out of nothing, but merely out of his own Essence or Substance, as well as the other Angels. As it is written, Through him, and in him, are all Things: And His only is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory; and all in him, as the holy Scripture witnesses. And if it was not thus, no Sin would be imputed to the Devil, nor Men, if they were not eternal, and both in God, and out of God himself.

(10) Behold, we understand by Jerusalem the Paradise, and by the Way to Jericho the Going forth out of Paradise into this World, where then the World captivated us in her Garden, where continually the great Sea of Misery is wherein our Soul swims. Also the Devil is therein, who has bound us with the Chains of the Anger of God, and he leads the poor Soul captive (in the dark Garden of Flesh and Blood) into his fierce Garden of Anger; where the new-born Souls continually break out of his Garden, and break his hellish Kingdom in Pieces; also they have taken Possession of his royal Throne, where he was an Angel, and with their Horns (which are the Spirit of God) have broken in Pieces his hellish Kingdom which he set up; also they oppose him with their Storm out of Hell into Heaven, and assault his Kingdom; but he holds the poor Soul captive with the Chains of the Anger, in this evil Flesh and Blood, and continually sets on the Crew of the Wicked, that they seduce it, and baptize it in the Anger of God up to the very Lips; and there the poor Soul stands up to the Neck in the Sea of Misery, ready to be drowned; and there the Devil thrusts it down with the Vices and Sins of the Body, and would drown the poor Soul in the Anger of God in the Abyss of Hell.

(5) These the Fiat created to a Similitude and Image of God, and overshadowed the same in the Fiat with the overflowing Virtue of God; and the Will of God i set itself [right] against the Image and Similitude, and they now which received the Will, they became Angels, for they set their Imagination, in the Will, in the Heart of God, and they did eat of the Verbum Domini [of the Word of the Lord;] but they that set their Imagination in the dark Mind, as Lucifer [did, that he might] fly out above the Deity and Meekness in the Might of the Fire in the Flash, in the sharp Might of God, and be Lord alone, they became Devils, and they have that Name from their being thrust [or driven] out of the Light; for they were in the Light when the Fiat created them, for the Fiat which created them stood in the Light.

(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.

(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.

(2) That this is sooth, it seemeth by this that followeth. The devil is a spirit, and of his own nature he hath no body, more than hath an angel. But yet nevertheless what time that he or an angel shall take any body by leave of God, to make any ministration to any man in this life; according as the work is that he shall minister, thereafter in likeness is the quality of his body in some part. Ensample of this we have in Holy Writ. As oft as any angel was sent in body in the Old Testament and in the New also, evermore it was shewed, either by his name or by some instrument or quality of his body, what his matter or his message was in spirit. On the same manner it fareth of the fiend. For when he appeareth in body, he figureth in some quality of his body what his servants be in spirit. Ensample of this may be seen in one instead of all these other. For as I have conceived by some disciples of necromancy, the which have it in science for to make advocation of wicked spirits, and by some unto whom the fiend hath appeared in bodily likeness; that in what bodily likeness the fiend appeareth, evermore he hath but one nostril, and that is great and wide, and he will gladly cast it up that a man may see in thereat to his brain up in his head. The which brain is nought else but the fire of hell, for the fiend may have none other brain; and if he might make a man look in thereto, he wants no better. For at that looking, he should lose his wits for ever. But a perfect prentice of necromancy knoweth this well enough, and can well ordain therefore, so that he provoke him not.

(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.

(36) But what can be said? The Devil will have it no otherwise. When his Kingdom begins to be stormed [battered and assaulted] at one Place, then he blows up the Storm all over, [as well in one as another,] in the Children of God; the Spirit of Punishment [Vengeance or Reproof] is stirred up; and in the worldly bestial Man, the Devil blows up mere scorning and disgracing Mockers; for they have the Kingdom of Christ in the History, and the Devil's Kingdom in themselves, as their own Possession.

(4) And now when he saw and knew by that which God had told him, that he should die and perish, if he did eat of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it made him continually imagine that he was now no more the Child of God, and that he was not created out of God's own Essence or Substance, out of the first Principle. He conceived that he was now but a mere Child of this World, when he beheld his Corruptibility, and also the monstrous Image which he was in; and that the paradisical that his Spirit and Perfection were driven out of Paradise, (that is, out of the second Principle of God, where the Light or the Heart of God is generated from Eternity to Eternity, and where the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son;) and that he now lived no more merely by the Word of God, but did eat and drink, viz. the Birth of his Life henceforward consisted, in the third Principle, that is, in the [Region,] Kingdom, or Dominion of the Stars and Elements, and he must now eat of the Virtue and Fruit thereof, and live thereby: And upon this he then supposed, that he was past Recovery, and that the noble Image of God was destroyed. And besides, the Devil also continually represented his Corruptibility and Mortality to him, and himself could see nothing else, seeing he was gone out of Paradise, that is, out of the incorruptible holy i Geniture [or Operation] of God; wherein he was God's holy Image and Child, in which God created him to continue therein for ever. And if the merciful Love of God had not appeared to him again in the Center of the Birth of his Life, and comforted him, he would have thought that he was wholly departed, or quite separated from the eternal divine Birth, and that he was no more in God, nor God any more in him, and that he was no more of God's Essence.

(98) And thus stood the Soul as a valiant Champion, and said to Satan; Get thee hence, Satan, thou shouldst worship the Lord thy God, and serve him only. I have no more to do with thee. There the Devil, Hell, and the Kingdom of this World, were commanded to be gone, and the valiant Champion got the Victory; and the Devil was fain to get him gone, and the earthly [Part] was overcome. And here now the noble Champion stands upon the Moon, and receives all Might, in Heaven, Hell, and on Earth, into his Power, and rules (with his Soul, in the holy Ternary, in this outward Body) over Death and Life; and here this World is become Christ' own, for he has overcome it; he could live in God, and needed not the earthly Food nor Drink.

(97) Now when no Counsel [or Remedy] was found, and Man was sunk down into Hell, to the great Triumph of the Devils, then said God to the Serpent (the Devil;) Because thou hast done thus, be thou cursed; and the Seed of the Woman shall tread upon [or break] thy Head, and thou shalt bruise [or wound] his Heel; at which the Abyss of Hell did quake and tremble, but the Devil understood not wholly what that should be; only he saw that the Word imagined [or represented itself] in Adam and in Eve, in the Center of Life, and that it opposed the Fierceness of the Kingdom of Hell, of which he stood in Fear, and his Jollity was lessened, for he did not relish that.

(4) Mine eyes he loosed, and said: "Direct the nerve Of vision now along that ancient foam, There yonder where that smoke is most intense." Even as the frogs before the hostile serpent Across the water scatter all abroad, Until each one is huddled in the earth. More than a thousand ruined souls I saw, Thus fleeing from before one who on foot Was passing o'er the Styx with soles unwet. From off his face he fanned that unctuous air, Waving his left hand oft in front of him, And only with that anguish seemed he weary. Well I perceived one sent from Heaven was he, And to the Master turned; and he made sign That I should quiet stand, and bow before him. Ah! how disdainful he appeared to me! He reached the gate, and with a little rod He opened it, for there was no resistance. "O banished out of Heaven, people despised!" Thus he began upon the horrid threshold; "Whence is this arrogance within you couched? Wherefore recalcitrate against that will, From which the end can never be cut off, And which has many times increased your pain?

(11) Instil many vain fancies into men's minds. But, on the contrary, 'tis his perverseness and want of faith The philosopher denies the existence of the Devil; At the same time he is the Devil's laughing-stock. If thou hast not seen the Devil, look at thyself, Without demon's aid how came that blue turban on thy brow? Whosoever has a doubt or disquietude in his heart Now and then he displays firm belief, Beware, O believers! That lurks in you too; All the seventy and two heresies lurk in you;