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(26) And though it be clear that the Stars in the outward Birth [Geniture or Operation] alter the Essences in every one according to their Source [Quality, Influence, or Property,] yet the Element is still there, and they cannot alter that with their Power, except Man himself does it; they have only the outward Region; and besides, the Devil dares not 1 image [or imprint] himself, before the Time of the Understanding, when Man can incline himself to the Evil or to the Good. Yet none must presume upon this [Impotency of the Devil, and four Elements,] for if the Parents be wicked, God can well forsake a wicked Seed. For he willeth not that the Pearl should be cast before Swine; although he is very inclined to help all Men, yet it is [effectual] but for those that turn to him; and although the Child is in Innocence, yet the Seed is not in Innocence; and therefore it has Need of the Treader upon the Serpent [or Saviour.] Therefore, ye Parents, consider what ye do; especially you Knaves and Whores; you have a hard Lesson [to learn] here, consider it well, it is no jesting Matter, it shall be shown you in its Place, that the Heaven thunders, [and passes away with a Noise.] Truly the Time of the Rose brings it forth, and it is high Time to awake, for the Sleep is at an End, there shall a great Rent be before the Lily; therefore let every one take Heed to his Ways.

(24) Therefore we say now, according to our high Knowledge, that the Source [or active Desire] of all the three Principles does imprint itself together with the Child's Incarnation [or becoming Man,] in the Mother's Body. For after that Man is figured [or shaped] from the Stars and Elements, by the Fiat, so that the Elements have taken Possession of their Regions, [Kingdoms, or Dominions,] viz. the Heart, Liver, Lungs, Bladder, and Stomach, wherein they have their Regions, then must the there stands now the Image of God, and the Image of this World, and there also is the Image of the Devil. Now there must be Wrestling and Overcoming, and there is Need of the Treader upon the Serpent, even in the Mother's [Womb or] Body.

(17) But we should not here again wholly set down the Ground of the Deity, so far as it is otherwise meet and known by us, we account that needless [here,] for you may find it before the Incarnation of a Child in the Mother's [Womb or] Body. We set down thus much here, to the End that the Region of his World may be understood. And thus we give the Reader exactly to understand and know how the Region of Good and Evil are in one another, and how it is an imperishable Thing [or Substance,] so that one is generated out of the other, and that also the one goes forth out of the other into another Substance [or Being,] which it was not in the Beginning; as you may learn to understand this in Man, who in his Beginning, in the Will of Man and Woman, viz. in the Limbus, and in the Matrix, is conceived in the Tincture, and sown in an earthly Soil; where then the first Tincture A Desiring or Attracting. Dispels. (in the Will) breaks, and his own Tincture springs forth out of the anxious [or aching] Chamber of Darkness, and of Death, out of the anxious Source [or Property,] and blossoms out of the Darkness, in the broken Gate of the Darkness in it, as a pleasant Habitation, and so generates its Light out of the anxious Fierceness out of itself; where then (in the Light) there goes forth again the endless Source of the [Thoughts or] Senses, which make a Throne and Region of Reason, which governs the whole House, and desires to enter into the Region of Heaven, out of which it proceeded not. And therefore now this is not the original Will, which there desires to enter into the Region of the Heaven; but it is the preconceived Will out of the Source of the Anxiety, [which Will is a Desire to] enter through the deep Gate of God.

(60) And the Hardening is not so wholly in the Birth, that the Soul (from the Mother' Womb) should be quite dead to God, or that God did not desire it. The Anger is in the Flowing [Working or Boiling] of the Father, and the Father is God indeed, and generates his dear Heart and Love (in the Breaking of the Gate in the Habitation) out of himself. Should he then be at odds with himself, because his Anger is under the Root of his Love? Should he be at Enmity against himself? his Anger is his Strength and Omnipotence, and consuming Fire; and his Heart in the Love is his Meekness; and so now, that which approaches and enters into his Anger, is captivated in the Anger.

(39) This Figure does not (as many judge) go into the Abyss, but as the Parents were, so is also their Figure; for this Figure is the Parent's, till the Kindling of its Life, and then it is no more the Parent's, but its own. The Mother affords but a Lodging, and the Nutriment; and therefore if she destroys it willingly in her Body, she is a Murderer, and the divine Law judges her to the temporal Death.

(21) For these three Births are [inbred or] generated together with every one in the Mother's [Womb or] Body, and none ought to say, I am not elected; for it is a Lie, [and he] belies the Element, wherein Man also lives; and besides [he] belies the Virgin of Wisdom, which God gives to every one which seeks her with Earnestness and Humility. So [likewise] the Possibility of Seeking is also in every one, and it is inbred [or generated] in him with the all-possible hidden Element, [to which all Things are possible,] and there is no other Cause of Perdition in Man, than [was in or] with Lucifer, whose Will stood free; he must either reach into God in Humility, Chastity, and Meekness, or into the dark Mind, in the Climbing up of Malice and Fierceness [or Grimness,] which yet (cin its Flowing forth) desires not to lift itself up above God, but it inclines itself only above the Meekness, in the Fire-flash, in the stern [or fierce] Regeneration: But the Devils would (as Creatures) be above all, and be Lords wholly [of themselves,] and so it is also with Man here.

(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.

(70) Although indeed, Nature takes hold of the Child in the Mother's Body [or Womb,] and [shapes, figures, or] images it; yet the Region of the Stars has no other than the Image in the four Elements, and not [that] in the holy Element. And although indeed it images [or frames] a Man in the outward bestial Mind with a little Understanding many Times, yet that is no Matter; the outward Man is the Beast of the Stars, but the inward in the [one] Element is the Image of God; and the divine Framing [Figuring or Imaging] is not performed in the a outward, but in the inward Element.

(27) If we now search into the Life of Man in the Mother's [Womb or] Body, concerning his Virtue [or Power,] Speech, and Senses, and the noble and most precious Mind; then we find the Cause why we have made such a long P Register concerning the eternal Birth; for the Speech, Senses, and Mind, have also such an Origin as is above-mentioned concerning the eternal Birth of God, and it is a very precious Gate [or Explanation.]

(7) But they think [consider or imagine] only how to fill themselves and multiply, that their Life may subsist; and we also receive no more from the Spirit of the Stars and Elements. And therefore also our Children are naked and bare, with great Inability, and without Understanding; and now if the Spirit of this World had full [perfect and absolute] Power over the Essences of the Child, then he would easily put his rough Garment upon it also (viz. a rough Hide) but he must let that alone: And he must leave the Essences in the first and second Principle, to Man's own Choosing, to bind and yield himself to which [Principle] he will; which Man has (undeniably) in his full Power, which I will explain in its own Place according to its Worth, and deeply demonstrate it, in Spite of all the Gates of the Devil, and this World, which strive much against it.

(4) And we must here know, that our Life, which we get in our Mother's Body [or Womb,] stands merely and only in the Power of the Sun, Stars, and Elements; so that they not only figure [or fashion] a Child in the Mother's Body, and give it Life, but also bring it into this World, and nourish it the whole Time of its Life, and bring it up, also cause Fortune and Misfortune to it, and, at last, Death and Corruption; and if our Essences (out of which our Life is generated) were not higher, in their first Degree out of Adam, [than the Beasts,] then we should be wholly like the Beasts.

(8) And in this Form in the Wrath [or fierce Strength] in the watry sour Mother, the sour bitter Earth, Brimstone and Salt, is generated, before the Kindling of the Sun in the Matrix that is void of Understanding. But the Separation that is in it, is caused from the Birth's standing in great Anguish, and from its desiring the Separation in the Birth; for the Bitterness agrees not with the Harshness [or Sourness,] and yet they are as Mother and Son, and as Members one of another; and it must be so, or else nothing could be, for it is the eternal Band, and the Original of Life.

(6) Therefore though we speak of the Creation of the World, as if we had been by as present, and had seen it, none ought to marvel at it, nor hold it for impossible. For the Spirit that is in us, which one Man inherits from the other, that was breathed out of the Eternity into Adam, that same Spirit has seen it all, and in the Light of God it sees it still; and there is nothing that is far off, or unsearchable: For the eternal Birth, which stands hidden in the Center of Man, that does nothing [that is] new, it knows, works and does even the same that ever it did from Eternity; it labours for the Light and for the Darkness, and works in great Anguish; but when the Light shines therein, then there is mere Joy and Knowledge in its Working.

(5) And although we move thus weakly or impotently in all the three Births, and that the Gate of Paradise is so often darkened to us, and that the Devil does so often draw us into the hellish Gate, and that also the Elements cover the syderial Gate, and wholly cloud them, so that we oftentimes move in the whole Matrix, as if we were deaf, dumb, or half dead, yet if the paradisical Or the Dominion or Influences of the Stars. Light shines to us, we may very well see into the Mother of all the three Principles; for nothing can hinder us, the threefold Spirit of Man sees every Form and Quality in its Mother.

(42) Thus we are to consider, and highly to know in the Light of Nature, the Ground of the Kingdom of Heaven, and of Hell, as also [the Ground] of the Kingdom of this World, and how Man in the Mother's Body inherits three Kingdoms, and how Man in this Life bears a threefold Image, which our first Parents by the first Sin a inherited for us; therefore we have Need of the Treader upon the Serpent, to bring us again into the angelical Image. And it is needful for Man to tame his Body and Mind, [or bring them under Subjection,] with great Earnestness [and Labour,] and to submit himself under the Cross, and not to hunt so eagerly after Pleasure, Riches, and the Bravery of this World, for therein sticks Perdition.