The Preface to the Reader.

...within us, time and eternity and all mysteries are nestled and contained. They can truly be read in our own souls through the enlightenment of the Divine Spirit; for our mind is a true mystical mirror and looking-glass of divine and natural mysteries. We shall
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☞ receive more real knowledge from one effective, innate, and essential glimpse or ray of light arising from the new birth within us than from reading many hundreds of authors. By reading those authors, we scrape together an abundance of crafted works and concepts, framing for ourselves a Babel A reference to the Tower of Babel; here, it means a confused structure of human pride and language. of knowledge in our theories original: "Notion" and imagination original: "Fanse"—fancy. For in the true light, we receive the pledge and deposit original: "earnest" of that Spirit which searches all things, even the depths of God. Let no one think that this is not? impossible; for in a Christian who is born again in Christ, Christ—the light of life and the essence of love—dwells within. In him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; and he expresses this wisdom in the humble, surrendered original: "resigned" soul, in the manner and measure that pleases him and is most necessary for the current time and age.

These epistles are not filled with fine, flattering phrases or pleasing concepts of human art. Nor are they filled with learned quotations from ancient authors or the witty insights of sharp reason, dressed up in scholarly pomp and proud words to tickle and delight the reader's imagination. Neither do they taste of a sectarian spirit of hypocrisy...