Three Principles of the Divine Essence Chap. 8-16 - meuser

great Anguish, where Death and Life wrestle one with the other.
For when Man departed from Paradise into another Birth (viz.
into the Spirit of this World, into the Quality of the Sun, Stars,
and Elements) then the paradisical [Vision or] Seeing ceased,
[or was extinguished,] where Man sees from the divine Virtue,
without [Need of] the Sun and Stars; where the c Springing up
of the Life is in the Holy Ghost, and the Light of God is the
Glance of the Spirit, from whence he sees; which went out; for
the Spirit of the Soul went into the Principle of this World.
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.
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.
5. But our d Essences are generated much higher in the Beginning
of the Life of Adam than the Beasts, which have their
Essences but merely from the Spirit of this World, and it must
also, with the Spirit of this World in a corruptible Substance, go
into its eternal Ether: Whereas, on the contrary, the Essences
of Man are proceeded out of the unchangeable eternal Mind of
God, which cannot in Eternity corrupt.
6. For we have a certain Ground of this, in that our Mind can
find and conceive all whatsoever is in the Spirit of this World,
which no Beast can do: For no Creature can e conceive [further
or] higher than [what is] in its own Principle, out of which its
c Or there the Life in the Holy Ghost buds forth in the Place of the four Elements.
d Active essential Virtues, or Faculties.
e Think or imagine.
own Essences are proceeded in the Beginning: But we (that