(2) He is in his own Essence and Substance a twofold Man. For his Soul (in its own Substance) is out of the first Principle, which from Eternity has no Ground nor Beginning; and in the Time of the Creation of Man in Paradise, or the Kingdom of Heaven, the Soul was truly corporized by the Fiat in a spiritual Manner; but with the first Virtue [or Power] which is from Eternity, in its own first Virtue or Power it has remained inseparably in its first Root, and was illustrated [or made shining bright] by the second Principle, viz. by the Heart of God; and therewith standing in Paradise, was there, by the moving Spirit of God, breathed into the Matrix of the third Principle, into the starry and elementary Man. And now therefore he may understand the Ground of Heaven, as also of the Elements and of Hell, as far as the Light of God shines in him; for if that Light be in him, he is born in all the three Principles; but yet he is only a Spark risen from thence, and not the great Source, or Fountain, which is God himself.

(12) Now that this is demonstratively and certainly thus, [appears] in that it is written; And God breathed into him the a living Breath, whereby Man became a living Soul. All other Creatures which were produced out of the corruptible Limbus by the Fiat, in all those the Will in the Fiat had awakened the Spirit in their Center, and every Creature's Spirit went forth out of the Essence and Property of its own self, and mixed afterwards with the Spirit of the great World, of the Stars and Elements, and that ought not to have been in Man, his Spirit ought not to have mixed itself [or been united] with the Spirit of the Stars and Elements. The two Principles (viz. the Darkness and the Spirit of the Air) ought to have stood still in such a Substance [as should be the Image of God;] and therefore he breathed into him the diving Breath; understand God's Breath, that is, the paradisical Breath or Spirit, [viz.] the Holy Spirit; that should be the Breath of the Soul, in the Center of the Soul. And the Spirit which went forth out of the Limbus, or out of the Quinta Essentia (which is of the a Condition of the Stars) that was to have Power over the fifth Essence of this World. For Man was in one only Essence [or Substance,] and there was also but one only Man that God thus created, and he could have lived for ever. And although God had brought the Stars again into their Ether, and also had withdrawn the Matrix of the Elements, and the Elements also back into nothing, yet Man would have continued still. Besides, he had the paradisical Center in him, and he could have generated again out of himself, out of his Will, and have awakened the Center; and so should have been able in Paradise to generate an angelical Host, without Misery or Anguish, also without tearing [rending or dividing in himself;] and such a Man he ought to have been, if he must continue in Paradise, and be eternal without Decay; for Paradise is holy, and in that Respect Man also ought to have been holy, for the Virtue [and Power] of God and Paradise consists in Holiness. The deep Gate of the Soul.

(9) But because the Soul stood with its most inward Root in the Abyss of Hell, and according to the Kingdom of this World in the hard [frozen] Death, so that (if the Flesh and Blood, as also the Dominion of the Stars, should leave it) then it would continue inwardly in a Hardness, wherein there is no Source [or active Property,] and itself, in its own Property, would be but in the Fierceness of the Originality, in great Misery; therefore it was necessary, not only for God to come into the Soul, and generate it to the Light, (for there was Danger, that the Soul with its Imagination might go forth out of the Light again,) but also for God to assume a human Soul, from our Soul, and a new heavenly Body, out of the first glorious Body before the Fall, and put it on to the Soul, with the old earthly Body hanging on it, not only as a Garment, but really [united as one] in the Essences; so that it must be a Creature, that is, the whole God, with all the three Principles.

(6) And that it might do this, therefore the Heart of God became a human Soul, and slew (by his entering into Death) the Spirit of this World, and brought the Fulness of the Deity again into his human Soul, so that we also may altogether in his (as in our own) human Soul, through him, press into the holy Element before God. And now there is nothing to hinder us but our own vile sluggish Drowsiness, that we suffer ourselves to be so wholly and altogether led by the Spirit of this World, with Pride, exalting of ourselves to Honour and Esteem, and greedy Filling of the Belly [with Plenty;] and we look no further, [to consider] that we are but Pilgrims, and that as soon as the Spirit of this World has laid hold of us in the Mother's Body [or Womb,] we are then Pilgrims, and must travel with our Souls into another Country, where the earthly Body is not at Home.

(4) But the Soul of Man, which is enlightened with the holy Spirit of God, (which in the second Principle proceeds from the Father and the Son in the holy Heaven, that is, in the true divine Nature which is called God;) this Soul sees even into the Light of God, into the same second Principle of the holy divine Birth, into the heavenly Essence: But the syderial Spirit wherewith the Soul is clothed, and also the elementary [Spirit] which i rules the Source, or Springing and Impulsion of the Blood, they see no further than into their Mother, whence they are, and wherein they live.

(3) You must not so understand it, as if it were extinguished in itself: No; but the Soul of Adam went out from the Principle of God, into the Principle of this World; and therein now the Spirit of every Soul is thus generated again by human Propagation, as is mentioned before, and it cannot be otherwise. And therefore if we would be fit for the Kingdom of Heaven, we must be regenerated anew in the Spirit of God, or else none can inherit the Kingdom of God, as Christ taught us faithfully; of which I will write hereafter, that it may be a Fountain for the Thirsty, and a Light to the noble Way, in the Blossom of the Lily.

(67) Therefore the Soul (when it departs from the Body) needs not to go far; for at that Place where the Body dies, there is Heaven and Hell; and the Man Christ dwells every where. God and the Devil is there, yet each of them in his own Kingdom. The Paradise is also there; and the Soul needs only to enter through the deep Door in the Center. Is the Soul holy? Then it stands in the Gate of Heaven, and the earthly Body has but kept it out of Heaven; and now when the Body comes to be broken, then the Soul is already in the Heaven; it needs no going out or in, Christ has it in his Arms, for where the four Elements break, there the Root of them remains, which is the holy Element, and therein the Body of Christ stands, and also Paradise, which stands in the springing Source of Joy; and that Element is the soft still Habitation.

(90) Now the heavenly [Body] must overcome the earthly, that the earthly may be as it were dead and impotent, and that the heavenly may xkeep the Dominion. And now as Adam stood in the Angle (between Love and Wrath) when he was tempted, there stood both Kingdoms against him, and pulled at him; and as God the Father (direct forward in his reconciled Will) is the Kingdom of Heaven, and the clear Deity; and backward (in the eternal Root of Nature) there is his Wrath and Anger, and yet both of them are in the eternal Father; and as in the eternal Nature of the Wrath, the Light or the Kingdom of Heaven is not known, and also in the eternal Light, the Kingdom of Fierceness and Wrath is not known, because each Kingdom is in itself, so is the Soul of Man also; it has Kingdoms in it, in which it a trades, in that it stands. If it trades in the Kingdom of Heaven, then the Kingdom of Hell is dead in it; not that it is ceased, but the Kingdom of Heaven is predominant, and the Kingdom of Fierceness is changed into Joy; so also, if it trades in the Kingdom of Wrath, then that is predominant, and the Kingdom of Heaven is as it were dead; although indeed (in itself it does not vanish) yet the Soul is not in it.

(13) Therefore he breathed into him the living Soul out of the eternal Will of the Father; (which Will goes thither only to generate his eternal Son;) and out of that Will he breathed into Man; the same is his eternal Soul, which must set its regenerated Will in the eternal Will of the Father, merely in the i Heart of God, and so it receives the Virtue of the Heart of God, and also his holy eternal Light, wherein Paradise, the Kingdom of Heaven, and also the eternal Joy springs up; and in this Virtue [or Power] it goes through all Things, and 1 breaks none of them, and is mighty over all [Things,] as God himself is; for it lives in the Virtue [or Power] of the Heart of God, and eats of the Word [that is] generated out of God.

(12) But if thou leavest them off, and passest with the Desire of thy Heart into the Mercy of God, then thou goest into Heaven, into God the Father, and thou walkest in the Body of Christ in the pure Element; and the Holy Ghost goes forth out of thy Soul, and leads thee into all Truth; and the old corrupt Man does but hang to thee, which thou shalt destroy in Death, and with thy Love in Christ still overcome, and captivate the Anger of the Father in thy Soul; and thou shalt spring up with thy new Man through Death, and appear in the same at the last Judgment-Day. The Gate to Babel.

(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.

(41) Therefore in this World all Things are given into Man's Power, because he is an eternal Spirit, and all other Creatures [are] no other than a Figure in the Wonders of God; and therefore Man ought well to consider himself, what he speaks, does, and purposes, in this World; for all his Works follow after him, and he has them eternally before his Eyes, and lives in them. Except it be, that he is again new regenerated out of Evil and Falshood, through the Blood and Death of Christ, in the Water and the Holy Spirit, and then he breaks forth out of the hellish and earthly Image, into an angelical [Image,] and comes into another Kingdom, into which its Untowardness [or Vices] cannot follow, and that [Untowardness, Contrariety, or Vice] is drowned in the Blood of Christ, and the Image of God is renewed out of the earthly and hellish.

(16) Seeing then that Man is so very earthly, therefore he has none but earthly Knowledge, except he be regenerated in the Gate of the Deep. He always supposes that the Soul (at the Deceasing of the Body) goes only out at the Mouth; and he understands nothing concerning its odeep Essences above the Elements. When he sees a blue Vapor go forth out of the Mouth of a dying Man (which makes a strong Smell all over the Chamber) then he supposes that is the Soul.

(25) But there is a great Difference in Souls, and therefore a the going to Heaven is very unlike; some of them are through true Repentance and Sorrow for their Misdeeds, through their Faith (in the Time of their Bodies) set [or ingrafted] into the Heart of God, [and] new regenerated through the Birth of Jesus Christ; and they instantly (with the Breaking of their Bodies) leave all that is earthly, and instantly also lay off the Region of the Stars; and they comprehend, in their Essences of the first Principle, the Mercy of God the Father in the kind Love of Jesus Christ; and these] also stand, in the Time of their Bodies, according to the Essences of the Soul, (which they receive from the Passion and Death of Christ) in the Gate of the Heaven; and their Departure from the Body is a very pleasant Entering into the Element before God, into a still Rest, expecting their Bodies, without [irksome] Longing; where then the Paradise shall flourish again, which the Soul tastes very well, but effects no Source [or Work] till the first Adam, [as he was] before the Fall, dbe again upon it.

(1) AND if thou say aught touching the ascension of our Lord, for that was done bodily, and for a bodily bemeaning as well as for a ghostly, for both He ascended very God and very man: to this will I answer thee, that He had been dead, and was clad with undeadliness, and so shall we be at the Day of Doom. And then we shall be made so subtle in body and in soul together, that we shall be then as swiftly where us list bodily as we be now in our thought ghostly; whether it be up or down, on one side or on other, behind or before, all I hope shall then be alike good, as clerks say. But now thou mayest not come to heaven bodily, but ghostly. And yet it shall be so ghostly, that it shall not be on bodily manner; neither upwards nor downwards, nor on one side nor on other, behind nor before.

(4) For no such Earth or Flesh as we carry about us can subsist in the Light of God: Therefore also Christ said; None goes to Heaven, but the Son of Man who is come from Heaven, and who is in Heaven. Thus our Flesh before the Fall was heavenly, out of the heavenly Limbus. But when Disobedience came, in the Lust of this World, to generate itself in another Center, then it [the Flesh] became earthly; for by the Biting of the earthly Apple in the Garden of Eden, the earthly Dominion [or Kingdom] took its Beginning: And the Mother of the great World instantly took the little World into its Power [or Virtue,] and made it to be of a bestial P Kind, both in Form and in Substance.

(12) But seeing the heavenly Limbus was manifested through the earthly, and was in the Fruit in one only Essence, and Adam so too, therefore it behoved Adam (having received a living Soul out of the first Principle, and breathed in from the Holy Ghost, and enlightened from the Light of God standing in the second Principle) not to reach after the earthly Matrix.

(15) Therefore, O noble Man, let not Antichrist ahd the Devil befool you, who tell you that the Deity is far off from you, and direct you to a Heaven that is situated far above you; whereas there is nothing nearer to you than the Heaven is. You only stand before the Door of Heaven, and you are gone forth with Adam out of the paradisical Heaven into the third Principle; yet you stand in the Gate, do but as the eternal Mother does, which by great desiring and longing after the Kingdom of God, attains the Kingdom of Heaven, wherein God dwells, wherein Paradise springs up; do you but so, set all your Desire upon the Heart of God, and so you will pass in by Force, as the eternal Mother does; and then it shall be with thee as Christ said, The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth Violence, and the Violent take it by Force: So you shall make to yourself Friends in Heaven with your unrighteous Mammon, and so you come to be the true Similitude and Image of God, and his proper own; for all the three Principles, with the Eternity, are in you, and the holy Paradise is again generated in you, wherein God dwells. Then where will you seek for God? Seek him in your Soul only that is proceeded out of the eternal Nature, wherein the divine Birth stands.

(5) For the Soul which is out of the first Principle (out of the Band of the Eternity) was breathed into the Element of the Body, to [be] the Image of God, out of the strong Might of God, and enlightened from the divine Light, so that it has received an angelical Source [or Quality;] but when it went forth out of the Light of God into the Spirit of this World, then there sprung up in it the Source of the first Principle; and it neither saw nor felt the Kingdom of God any more, till that the Heart of God set itself in the Midst again; into that the Soul must enter again, and be born anew.

(10) Man's Image born of a Woman, here in this Life, is in a threefold Form, and stands in three Principles [or Beginnings;] viz. the Soul, that has its Original out of the first Principle, out of the strong and sour Might of the Eternity; and it swims [or moves] between two Principles, begirt with the third [Principle;] it reaches with its original Root into the Depth of the Eternity, in the Source [or Quality] where God the Father from Eternity enters (through the Gates of the Breaking through, and Opening) in himself, into the Light of Joy; and it is in the Band, where God calls himself a jealous, angry and austere God, and is a Sparkle out of the Omnipotence, appearing in the great Wonders of the Wisdom of God, through the dear Virgin of Chastity; and with the Form of the first Principle [it stands] in the Gate of the Sourness of Eternity [mingled, united, or] qualified with the Region of the Sun and Stars, and begirt with the four Elements; and the holy Element (viz. the Root of the four Elements) that is the Body of the Soul, in the second Principle, in the Gate [before or] towards God; and according to the Spirit of this World, the Region of the Stars is the Body of the Soul; and the Production of the four Elements is the Source-house, [or House of Operation,] or the Spirit of this World, which kindles the Region, so that it [springs forth or] operates. 1 1. And thus the Soul lives in such a threefold Source [or working Quality,] being bound with three Cords, and is drawn of all three. The first Cord is the Band of Eternity, generated in the Rising up of the Anxiety, and reaches the Abyss of Hell. The second Cord is the Kingdom of Heaven, generated through the Gates of the Deep in the Father, and regenerated out of the Birth of Sins, through the Humanity of Christ, and there the Soul also (in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ the Son of God) is tied up, and is drawn by the dear Virgin, in the Word of God. The third Cord is the Kingdom of the Stars, qualifying [or mingling] with the Soul, and it is hard drawn and held by the four Elements, and carried and led by them.