(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.

(47) Therefore it can only be done here in this Life (while thy Soul sticks in the Will of the Mind) so that thou breakest open the Gate of the Deep, and pressest in to God through a New Birth; for here thou hast the highly worthy noble Virgin of the divine Love for thy Assistance, who leads thee in through the Gate of the noble Bridegroom, who stands in the Center in the parting Mark, between the Kingdom of Heaven, and the Kingdom of Hell, and generates thee in the Water and Life of his Blood and Death, and therein drowns and washes away thy false [or evil] Works, so that they follow thee not [in such a Source and Property,] that thy Soul be not infected therein, but according to the first Image in Man before the Fall, as a new, chaste, and pure noble Virgin's Image, without any Knowledge of thy untowardness [or Vices,] which thou hadst here.

(3) And although I write now, as if there was a Beginning in the eternal Birth, yet it is not so; but the eternal Nature thus begets [or generates] itself without Beginning. My Writings must be understood in a creaturely Manner, as the Birth of Man is, who is a Similitude of God. Although it be just so in the eternal Being, [Essence or Substance,] yet that is both without Beginning and without End; and my Writing is only to this End, that Man might learn to know what he is, what he was in the Beginning, how he was a very glorious eternal holy Man, that should never have known the Gate of the strong [or austere] Birth in the Eternity, if he had not suffered himself to lust after it through the Infection of the Devil, and had not eaten of that naked and vain Man in a bestial Form, and lost the heavenly Garment of the divine Power, and lives now in the Kingdom of the Devil, in the i infected Salnitre, and feeds upon the infected Food. Therefore it is necessary for us to learn to know ourselves, what we are, and how we might be redeemed from the anguishing austere Birth, and be regenerated or born anew, and live in the new Man, (which is like the first Man before the Fall,) in Christ our Regenerator.

(44) But in the new Man (which we attract onto our Souls in the Bosom of the Virgin) we shall spring and flourish again; and therein is no Necessity nor Death, for the Kingdom of this World passes away. Therefore he that has not this Image in the new Birth, shall, in the Restoration of the Spirit of the eternal Nature, have the Image of what his Heart and Confidence has been set upon here [put upon him;] for every Kingdom images [or figures] its Creatures, according to the Essences which were grown here in their Will.

(16) Again, when we read of the old man and the new man we must mark what that meaneth. The old man is Adam and disobedience, the Self, the Me, and so forth. But the new man is Christ and true obedience, a giving up and denying oneself of all temporal things, and seeking the honour of God alone in all things. And when dying and perishing and the like are spoken of, it meaneth that the old man should be destroyed, and not seek its own either in spiritual or in natural things. For where this is brought about in a true divine light, there the new man is born again. In like manner, it hath been said that man should die unto himself, that is, to earthly pleasures, consolations, joys, appetites, the I, the Self, and all that is thereof in man, to which he clingeth and on which he is yet leaning with content, and thinketh much of. Whether it be the man himself, or any other creature, whatever it be, it must depart and die, if the man is to be brought aright to another mind, according to the truth. Thereunto doth St. Paul exhort us, saying: “Put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts: . . . and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”17 Now he who liveth to himself after the old man, is called and is truly a child of Adam; and though he may give diligence to the ordering of his life, he is still the child and brother of the Evil Spirit. But he who liveth in humble obedience and in the new man which is Christ, he is, in like manner, the brother of Christ and the child of God. Behold! where the old man dieth and the new man is born, there is that second birth of which Christ saith, “Except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”18 Likewise St. Paul saith, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”19 That is to say, all who follow Adam in pride, in lust of the flesh, and in disobedience, are dead in soul, and never will or can be made alive but in Christ.

(9) For it is written, you must be born anew through the Water and the Spirit, or else you shall not see the Kingdom of God. This Birth must be done within you: The Heart, or the Son of God must arise in the Birth of your Life; and then the Saviour Christ is your faithful Shepherd, and you are in Him, and He in you, and all that He and his Father have is yours, and none shall pluck you out of his Hands; and as the Son (viz. the Heart of the Father) is one [with the Father,] so also the new Man is one in the Father and the Son, one Virtue or Power, one Light, one Life, one eternal Paradise, one eternal heavenly Birth, one Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and thou his Child.

(12) Seeing then God is all in all, and has created Man to his Image and Similitude, to live with him eternally in his Love, Light, Joy and Glory, therefore we cannot say, that he was merely created out of the Corruptibility of this World, for therein is no eternal perfect Life, but Death, and Perplexity, Anguish, and Necessity; but as God dwells in himself, and goes through all his Works incomprehensibly to them, and is hindered by nothing, so was the Similitude before him out of the pure Element; it was indeed created in this World, yet the Kingdom of this World should not comprehend that [Image,] but the Similitude (Man) should mightily, and in perfect [Power or] Virtue, rule through the Essences (with the Essences out of the pure Element of the paradisical holy Limbus) through the Dominion of this World.

(39) At birth only a third part of the Divine Nature of man temporarily dissociates itself from its own immortality and takes upon itself the dream of physical birth and existence, animating with its own celestial enthusiasm a vehicle composed of material elements, part of and bound to the material sphere. At death this incarnated part awakens from the dream of physical existence and reunites itself once more with its eternal condition. This periodical descent of spirit into matter is termed the wheel of life and death, and the principles involved are treated at length by the philosophers under the subject of metempsychosis. By initiation into the Mysteries and a certain process known as operative theology, this law of birth and death is transcended, and during the course of physical existence that part of the spirit which is asleep in form is awakened without the intervention of death--the inevitable Initiator--and is consciously reunited with the Anthropos, or the overshadowing substance of itself. This is at once the primary purpose and the consummate achievement of the Mysteries: that man shall become aware of and consciously be reunited with the divine source of himself without tasting of physical dissolution.

(30) Also the new birth blossomed in the time of the creation, when man had not spoiled or corrupted it; but by him nature was still more corrupted; and so God cursed the ground. But seeing man took hold of the fruit of the old body, thereupon the fruit of the new body was hidden in its heaven, and man must now behold it with the new body, and cannot partake of it with the natural body.

(103) But if nature led them, like the irrational animals, to procreation, yet they were impelled to do it more quickly than. was proper because they were still young and had been led away by deceit. Thus God's judgment against them was just, because they did not wait for his will. But birth is holy. By it were made the world, the existences, the natures, the angels, powers, souls, the commandments, the law, the gospel, the knowledge of God. And "all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers, the flower falls; but the word of the Lord abides" which anoints the soul and unites it with the spirit. Without the body how could the divine plan for us in the Church achieve its end? Surely the Lord himself, the head of the Church, came in the flesh, though without form and beauty, to teach us to look upon the formless and incorporeal nature of the divine Cause. "For a tree of life" says the prophet, "grows by a good desire," teaching that desires which are in the living Lord are good and pure.

(43) For so long, and not an hour longer, the newborn King and grand Prince of this world, JESUS CHRIST, rested in death, and has regenerated the first three days of the creation of nature, and that very time [which was] in death, to light again; that this time might again be one time with the eternal time, and that no day of death might be between; and that the eternal love, and the newborn or regenerated love out of the new body of nature, might be one eternal love; and that there might be no difference between the eternal love, and the newborn or regenerated love, but that the newborn love might reach into the being or substance which was from eternity, and itself also be in eternity.

(63) For because Man was to be eternal, therefore he must also come to be out of the Eternal; for nothing is created out of the Fountain of the Heart of God. For that is the End of Nature, and has no such Essences; no comprehensible [or palpable] Thing enters therein; otherwise it would be a Filling and Darkness, and that cannot be: Also from Eternity, there has been nothing else but only the Source [or working Property] where the Deity continually rises up, as is mentioned before.

(13) The Soul of Man, which God has breathed into him, is out of the Eternal Father; yet understand it right; there is a Difference [to be observed, you must] understand, [that it is] out of his unchangeable Will, out of which he generates his Son and Heart from Eternity, out of the divine Center, from whence the Fiat goes forth, which makes Separation, and has in fit all the Essences of the eternal Birth, [or all Manner of Things which are in the eternal Birth.] Only the Birth of the Son of God, that very Center which the Son of God himself is, he has not; for that Center is the End of Nature, and not creaturely. That is the highest Center of the fire-burning Love and Mercy of God, the Perfection [or Fulness.] Out of this Center no Creature comes, but it appears [or shines] in the Creature, viz. in Angels, and in the Souls of holy Men; for the Holy Ghost, and the Omnipotence which frames the eternal Will in the eternal Father, go forth out of this [Center.]

(29) Now as man in his outward being is corrupted, and as to his fleshly birth or geniture is in the wrath of God, and is moreover also an enemy of God, and yet is but one man, and not two; and on the other hand, in his spiritual birth or geniture he is a child and heir of God, who ruleth and liveth with God, and qualifieth, mixeth or uniteth with the innermost birth or geniture of God; thus also is the place of this world come to be.

(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.

(25) And though those imagings were transitory, seeing they were not pure before God, yet God would, at the end of this time, extract and draw forth the heart and the kernel out of the new birth or geniture, and separate it from death and wrath; and the new birth should eternally spring up in God, without, distinct from this place, and bear heavenly fruits again.

(38) The second birth of this world stands in the life, for it is the astral birth, out of which is generated the third and holy birth or geniture, and therein love and wrath strive the one with the other.

(43) And for this Cause God became Man, that he might in himself new generate the Soul of Man again, and might redeem it new the Chains of the Fierceness of Anger, and not at all [for the bestial Body's Sake] which must melt again into the four Elements, and come to nothing; of which nothing will remain, but the Shadow in the Figure of all his Works, and Matters, which he has wrought at any Time.

(38) Now, wherever a man hath been made a partaker of the divine nature, in him is fulfilled the best and noblest life, and the worthiest in God’s eyes, that hath been or can be. And of that eternal love which loveth Goodness as Goodness and for the sake of Goodness, a true, noble, Christ-like life is so greatly beloved, that it will never be forsaken or cast off. Where a man hath tasted this life, it is impossible for him ever to part with it, were he to live until the Judgment Day. And though he must die a thousand deaths, and though all the sufferings that ever befell all creatures could be heaped upon him, he would rather undergo them all, than fall away from this excellent life; and if he could exchange it for an angel’s life, he would not. This is our answer to the question, “If a man, by putting on Christ’s life, can get nothing more than he hath already, and serve no end, what good will it do him?” This life is not chosen in order to serve any end, or to get anything by it, but for love of its nobleness, and because God loveth and esteemeth it so greatly. And whoever saith that he hath had enough of it, and may now lay it aside, hath never tasted nor known it; for he who hath truly felt or tasted it, can never give it up again. And he who hath put on the life of Christ with the intent to win or deserve ought thereby, hath taken it up as an hireling and not for love, and is altogether without it.

(48) Thou will ask, What is the New Regeneration? Or how is that done in Man? Hear and see, stop not thy Mind, let not thy mind be filled by the Spirit of this World, with its Might and Pomp. Take thy Mind, and break through [the Spirit of this World] entirely, incline thy Mind into the kind Love of God; make thy Purpose earnest and strong, to break through the Pleasure of this World with thy Mind, and not to regard it; consider that thou art not at Home in this World, but that thou art a strange Guest, captivated in a close Prison, cry and call to him, who has the Key of the Prison; yield thyself up to him, in Obedience, Righteousness, Modesty, Chastity, and Truth. And seek not so eagerly after the Kingdom of this World, it will stick close enough to thee without that; and then the chaste Virgin will meet thee in thy Mind highly and deeply, and will lead thee to thy Bridegroom, who has the Key to the Gate of the Deep; thou must stand before him, who will give thee to eat of the heavenly Manna, which will refresh thee, and thou will be strong, and struggle with the Gate of the Deep, and thou wilt break through as the i Day -break; and though thou liest captive here in the Night, yet the Rays of the Break of Day will appear to thee in the Paradise, in which Place thy chaste Virgin stands, waiting for thee with the Joy of the Angels, who will very kindly receive thee in thy new-born Mind and Spirit.