Fr. 3. Contemplation of Divine Revelation

comes hardness, cold, dryness, and darkness. For the attraction original: "Angezogenheit"; referring to the first property of nature where the will pulls inward overshadows itself; and this is the true ground of the eternal as well as temporal darkness; and the hardness and sharpness is the ground of sensitivity. (2) The second property is the motion within the attraction, which is a cause of separation. (3) The third property is the true sensation between the hardness and the motion, wherein the will feels itself, for it finds itself in great sharpness, like a great anguish, when compared to the Unity The "Unity" refers to the undifferentiated stillness of God before creation. (4) The fourth property is the fire, as the flash of radiance; this originates in the joining together of the great anxious sharpness and the Unity: for the Unity is gentle and still; and the moving, hard sharpness is terrible, as a ground of painfulness.

12. Thus there is a "shrack" original: "Schrack"; a sudden terror or lightning-like shock in the joining together; and in this shock the Unity is seized, so that it becomes a glimpse or luster, as an uplifting joy. Then the light originates in the midst of the darkness: Then the Unity becomes a light, and the pleasantness of the desiring will within the properties becomes a spirit-fire, which takes its source and origin from the harsh, cold sharpness, in the motion and sensitivity in the darkness; and it is the very essence of that, as a terrible consumability.

13. And according to this, God is called an angry, jealous God, and a consuming fire; not according to what He is in Himself outside of all perception, but according to the eternal fire-ground; and in the darkness, the foundation of Hell is understood as a forgetfulness of the Good, which darkness is entirely hidden in the light, like the night in the day, as can be read in John 1:5 original: "Johannis 1: 5"; "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.".

14. Thus we see in the above-mentioned properties God's wrath, as the first property of drawing into the "No": for it does not liken itself to the "Yes" original: "Jah und Nein"; the dialectic of Yes and No, or affirmation and negation, central to this philosophy, that is, with the Unity, for it creates a darkness within itself, which is a loss of the Good.

15. Secondly, it creates a sharpness within itself, which is the ground of the eternal dying of gentleness, from the gentle Unity. Thirdly, it creates a hardness within itself, which is the eternal death, as a powerlessness. Fourthly, it creates within itself