Reflections on Esaias Stiefel's Booklet: On the Threefold State of Man and His New Birth

and the Holy Spirit / if you wish to see the kingdom of God: The water is the heavenly essence / born from the gentleness of God's Majesty / therein is the highly noble tincture transmuting essence heavenly.

47. And understand us / that God's Word / as it became man in Mary / has introduced the same water or Divine essence back into our essence enclosed in death / understand not into the earthliness / but into the heavenly part / which was introduced with Adam with the Holy Spirit / when He introduced Himself into the image: For the woman's seed was to crush the serpent's head; God's essence took on human essence / and became flesh / and not alone the flesh's essence / but also the soul's essence: Thus the Divine life came again into the flesh / and the other principium in man was born again to life in God / and yet at the same time clung to the outer realm.

48. Since we have all come from Adam / so we are also all born at the same time from his corrupted sinful flesh / and are all enclosed in God's wrath / and with the soul in the dark world: for we are born from earthly / evil / perverted will / in disobedience / in pure anxiety / misery / poison / malice / envy / and wrath / from eternal death / into the earthly fragile life: We have been born from the realm of truth into lies and deceit: the devil has introduced his will into us / and therein we live / and eat evermore from the forbidden fruit.

49. Unless it be that we turn back with our will / and enter again into the New Birth / which Christ has opened for us in our humanity: So we are received again in the Word / which opened itself in Mary / in the true human essence / and become pregnant with the Savior / as with the Divine realm.

50. Not in the earthly essence is God revealed in us / but in the true image / which faded in Adam: But the outer hangs on the inner / the inner man reveals the Divine mysterium hidden divine reality / and the outer man reveals the outer mysterium / as the mirror of wonders.

51. Thus now the conflict begins in a new-born man; the new one wants to be master / for he views the Divine world / and the old one stands against him / and also wants to be master / for he views the outer world: But as the inner grows / and