Treatise

...so that we might invoke the Father in this manner: Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven, etc. This means that just as your kingdom is in heaven—or in our spiritual part—so too may it come in our earthly and corporeal part, so that the soul may be united with the body by your holy glue Fludd often uses the term "glue" (glutinum) to describe the spiritual force that binds the material and immaterial worlds together., and both together, in joined piety, may be able to perform and carry out the will of the Father who is in heaven—that is, in the internal or spiritual man. Therefore, those who do not know that Christ and the Kingdom of God are within them, rather repel (as faithless and unbelieving) their own petitions from the ears of God, than being able to procure any access for them.

Therefore, we must first believe that Christ, the spiritual and living rock, dwells within us; and for that reason, we must conclude that we are all many members of the one Christ, according to the Apostle Paul’s judgment. We are, as it were, cut from that rock according to the prophet's teaching A reference to Isaiah 51:1: "look to the rock from which you were cut.". To this living Rock, according to the instructions of Saint Peter, it is our duty to approach as living stones. It is highly fitting for us Christians of whatever sect to look back and pay heed with that prophet, lest with the impious Jews we release Barabbas—that is, the "son of confusion" Fludd provides a common medieval etymology for Barabbas: bar (son) and abba (father/confusion).—and send Christ back into the bonds of a dark prison anew. By this, I mean we must not submerge the light and rays of our understanding in the darkness of ignorance and subject him, as it were, to a new cross.

1 John 1:1

Finally, that this rock is to be handled, seen, and indeed even heard, Saint John confesses in these words: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, and our hands have touched, concerning the word of life, etc.

By these words, he does not mean Christ as a mortal man (insofar as he was not there in that form from the beginning), but he speaks of the Word, which was from the beginning—of Christ, I say, who (by the Apostle's witness) is said to fill all things and be present everywhere. This has been so since the origin of the world, concerning that spiritual rock from which the Israelites tasted in the desert, and which true Catholics Fludd is reclaiming the word "Catholic" to mean those who recognize the "universal" spiritual truth, rather than just members of the Roman Church. taste in the sacrament.

Finally, it will be most difficult to deny that this universal Christ is clothed as a rock even until the consummation of the world.

But because this pertains more to the mystery of the sacrament than is fit for public disclosure, we shall blunt the edge of our pen and restrain its wings, lest by flying too high it should vomit out something undigested to the profane crowd.

From these premises (most Christian readers), the following Conclusions arise:

1. That all Christians can be called "living stones," whence each one equally with Saint Peter is named Cephas Aramaic for "Rock." Fludd argues the name applies to the spiritual state of any believer, not just the Apostle..

2. Since all Christians are therefore stones, as members cut from the universal rock, it follows that whoever establishes the foundation of the Church upon a single man, or an individual Cephas—whether it be Peter or a rock—he is not to be called a "Catholic," but a particularist, and consequently a sectarian, and not at all a foster-child of the universal religion.

3. Just as the hidden Christ was concealed by Moses in his rock after the manner of a spiritual thing in a corporeal one, so Moses hid the rock in his writings, and for this reason he is said to have written under a veil. Hence the Apostle says: The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.

4. Just as the Apostle is observed to teach in two ways in the sacred writings—namely, either by speculating or by practicing—so these words, The Rock was Christ, come to be considered by us both speculatively and practically.

5. That Holy Scripture leads toward this very rock wrapped in flesh...