(26) And as the Prophets have written of it, so the new Man, (which is born to us of God) is the Son of the Virgin, not of earthly Flesh and Blood, also not of the Seed of Man, but conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of a pure divine chaste Virgin, and (in this World) revealed [or manifested] in our Flesh and Blood, and is entered with his holy Body into Death, and has separated the earthly [Body,] together with the Might of the Anger, from the holy Element, and has restored the Soul again, and has opened the Gate to the Light of God again, so that the averted Soul can (with the Essences of the Father in the holy Will) reach the Light of God again.

(71) For the dead or mortal Flesh belongs not to the Birth of Life, as that it can receive or conceive the Life of the Light as a Propriety; but the Life of the Light in God rises up in the dead or mortal Flesh, and generates to itself, from or out of the dead or mortal Flesh, another heavenly and living Body, which knows and understand the Light. [C: inno.]

(45) And that you may rightly and properly understand us; we [mean or] understand here no strange Christ, who is not our Brother; as himself said at his Resurrection, Go to my Brethren, and your Brethren, and tell them, I go to my God and to your God. As indeed the Body (which we here carry about us) is not the Image of God, which God created; for the Kingdom of this World puts its Image upon us, when Adam consented to yield to it; and we (if we be regenerated) are not at Home in this World with our new Man; as Christ said to his Disciples, / have called you out of this World, that you shall be where I am; and Saint Paul says, Our Conversation (as to the new Man) is in Heaven. Thus we understand also, that our Immanuel, [who is] the most holy of all, with his true Image of God (wherein also our true Image of God does consist) is not of this World; but as the old mortal Man (from the Kingdom of this World) hangs to us, so our mortal Man also hung to the Image of God in Christ, which he drew from his Mother Mary, as the pure Element [draws] the Kingdom of this World [to it.]

(9) Thus his earthly Body is swallowed up in God, though indeed he never had such an earthly Body as we have, for he was not of the Seed of a Man; but we speak only of the Comprehensibility and Visibility of it to our Eyes, according to which he is our Brother; and he shall appear at the last Judgment-Day in our fleshly Form, in the Power of God, as Lord over all, for all Power in Heaven and in this World is subjected under him, and he is Judge over all; a Prince of Life, and Lord over Death.

(28) For this Flesh cannot inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, but is only a Seed which is sown into the Earth, out of which will grow an impalpable or incomprehensible Body, such as the first was before the Fall. But the Spirit is eternal Life, which unites, qualifies, or mixes with God, and comprehends the internal Deity in Nature.

(66) It is true indeed he took our Body on him, but not mingled with the holy Ternary; for Death stuck in our Body, and the Ternarius Sanctus was chis Death, and Victory; and in the holy Ternary was his Deity; and that Man is come from Heaven, and has put on the earthly [Man,] and brought to pass the Redemption between the earthly and the heavenly, whereby the Soul was severed from the Anger and Wrath.

(9) Further also, the most conspicuous fact of all theology--the God-formation of Jesus amongst us--is both unutterable by every expression and unknown to every mind, even to the very foremost of the most reverend angels. The fact indeed that. He took substance as man, we have received as a mystery, but we do not know in what manner, from virginal bloods, by a different law, beyond nature, He was formed, and how, with dry feet, having a bodily bulk and weight of matter, He marched upon the liquid and unstable substance; and so, with regard to all the other features of the super-physical physiology of Jesus. Now, we have elsewhere sufficiently spoken of these things, and they have been celebrated by our illustrious leader, in his Theological Elements, in a manner far beyond natural ability--things which that illustrious man acquired, either from the sacred theologians, or comprehended from the scientific, search of the Oracles, from manifold struggles and investigations respecting the same, or was instructed from a sort of more Divine Inspiration, not only having learnt, but having felt the pangs of things Divine, and from his sympathy with them, if I may so speak, having been perfected to their untaught and mystic union and acceptance. And that we may display, in fewest words, the many and blessed visions of his most excellent intelligence, the following are the things he says, concerning the Lord Jesus, in the Theological Elements compiled by him.

(52) You must understand, Mary was to conceive in the Body, viz. in her own Body, not in a strange assumed [Body,] as the Unenlightened (who apprehend not the Kingdom of God) might interpret our Writings to mean. Besides, it is not the Ground neither, which the Ancients and those heretofore have set down (which yet went very high) as if Mary from Eternity had been hidden in Ternario Sancto [the holy Ternary or Trinity,] and that she entered at that Time only in Anna, as into a Case, [or House,] and was not of the Seed of Joachim, and Blood of Anna. They say, she was an eternal Virgin out of the Trinity, of whom Christ was born; because he came not out of the Flesh and Blood of any Man, and as himself witnesses, that he was not of this World, but was come from Heaven. He says, That he came forth from God, and must return again to God; and to Nicodemus he said, No one goes into Heaven, but the Son of Man which is come from Heaven, and who is in Heaven.

(3) "As much as the image is inferior to the living face, so much is the world inferior to the living Æon. What is, then, the cause of the image? The majesty of the face, which exhibits the figure to the painter, to be honoured by his name; for the form is not found exactly to the life, but the name supplies what is wanting in the effigy. The invisibility of God co-operates also in order to the faith of that which has been fashioned." For the Creator, called God and Father, he designated as "Painter," and "Wisdom," whose image that which is formed is, to the glory of the invisible One; since the things which proceed from a pair are complements, and those which proceed from one are images. But since what is seen is no part of Him, the soul comes from what is intermediate, which is different; and this is the inspiration of the different spirit, and generally what is breathed into the soul, which is the image of the spirit. And in general, what is said of the Creator, who was made according to the image, they say was foretold by a sensible image in the book of Genesis respecting the origin of man; and the likeness they transfer to themselves, teaching that the addition of the different spirit was made; unknown to the Creator. When, then, we treat of the unity of the God who is proclaimed in the law, the prophets, and the Gospel, we shall also discuss this; for the topic is supreme. But we must advance to that which is urgent. If for the purpose of doing away with death the peculiar race has come, it is not Christ who has abolished death, unless He also is said to be of the same essence with them. And if He abolished it to this end, that it might not touch the peculiar race, it is not these, the rivals of the Creator, who breathe into the image of their intermediate spirit the life from above - in accordance with the principle of their dogma - that abolish death.

(72) For this Body is but a Shell, from which the new Body grows, as it is with a Grain of Wheat in the Earth. The Husk or Shell shall not rise and be living again, no more than it is in the Wheat, but will remain for ever in Death and in Hell. "The new Body grows out of the heavenly Substantiality in the Word, out of the Help and Blood of Christ, out of the Mystery of the old Body." [Ggg]

(27) But now the Flesh is not the whole Man; for this Flesh cannot comprehend or apprehend the Deity, else the Flesh were not mortal and corruptible, or fading and transitory; for Christ saith, 'It is the Spirit that quickens, the Flesh profiteth nothing.' [b Or the Spirit is the Life.] [a John 6. 63.]

(48) And thither the second Adam (with his becoming Man) brought it in again, and [there] as a loving Child it was bound up with the Word of God, in Love and Righteousness; and there the new Creature (out of the Element) came to be the Body of the Soul. For in the new Creature of the Limbus of God, the Soul was holy, and the earthly Essence (out of Flesh and Blood) clave to it, in the Time of the earthly Body; which [Essences] Christ (when his Soul with the new Creature went into Death) left in Death, and with the new Body in the natural Soul he arose from Death, and triumphed over Death; as hereafter you shall see the Wonders concerning the Death and Resurrection of Christ.

(42) Therefore the Body of Christ is inferior to the Deity; and in these our human Essences he suffered Death, and his Deity of the holy Man in the pure Element entered together also into Death, and bereaved Death of its Power, and separated the natural Soul (which Christ commended to his Father, when he died on the Cross) from the Kingdom of this World, also from Death, from the Devil, and from Hell, in the strong divine Might [or Power,] and opened a Gate for us all, who come to him and Or by. incline ourselves (with Mind and Thoughts) to him; then the Father draws our Soul (which is in him) into the pure Love of Christ; where then it puts its Imagination again through Christ P forward into the holy Trinity, and is fed again from the Verbum Domini [the Word of the Lord,] where then it is an Angel again, quite separated from the Kingdom of the Devil, and of this World, in the Death of Christ.

(48) You must know, that Christ, while he lived upon the Earth, and all we that are new-born in him, have and carry the heavenly Flesh and Blood in the earthly [Man,] and we carry it also in the new Man, in the Body of Christ. And when we die thus in the old earthly Body, then we live (in the new Body) in the Body of Jesus Christ, and spring up in him out of Death; and our Springing up is our Paradise, where our Essences spring up in God, and the earthly is swallowed up in Death, and we put on our Lord Jesus Christ, not only in the Faith and Spirit, but in the Virtue [and Power] of the Body, in our heavenly Flesh and Blood; and so we live to God the Father in Christ his Son, and the Holy Ghost confirms all our Doings; for all what we shall do, it is God does it in us.

(1) How, you ask, is Jesus, Who is beyond all, ranked essentially with all men? For, not as Author of men is He here called man, but as being in absolute whole essence truly man. But we do not define the Lord Jesus, humanly, for He is not man only, (neither superessential nor man only), but truly man, He Who is pre-eminently a lover of man, the Super-essential, taking substance, above men and after men, from the substance of men. And it is nothing less, the ever Superessential, super-full of super-essentiality, disregards the excess of this, and having come truly into substance, took substance above substance, and above man works things of man. And a virgin supernaturally conceiving, and unstable water, holding up weight of material and earthly feet, and not giving way, but, by a supernatural power standing together so as not to be divided, demonstrate this. Why should any one go through the rest, which are very many? Through which, he who looks with a divine vision, will know beyond mind, even the things affirmed respecting the love towards man, of (the Lord) Jesus,--things which possess a force of superlative negation. For, even, to speak summarily, He was not man, not as not being man, but as being from men was beyond men, and was above man, having truly been born man, and for the rest, not having done things Divine as God, nor things human as man, but exercising for us a certain new God-incarnate energy of God having become man.