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

heaven / from whence we / understand the outer mysterium / wait for the Savior Jesus Christ. For the outer mysterium in man / will first put on Jesus Christ on the Last Day / when the turba destructive/discordant force will first be taken from the mysterium / therein the mirror of sin stands / which belongs to the wrath of God; And therefore a judgment-day is appointed / when everything shall be brought back again / which we have lost in Adam.

56. If we were, however, to be entirely perfect with this outer visible graspable flesh / the outer man would have to have put on paradise again / then the outer man would be immortal / and unbreakable / and could go through earth and stones; also the four elementa elements would have to be as if swallowed into one / as we shall be on the Last Day: also the outer man would have to eat no more from the forbidden tree; also the magical spiritual/willed impregnation would have to begin / and we would not have to be born in an animalistic way.

57. But if the author / as he reports / has put on paradise / then he is enraptured; I cannot say such of myself as yet / I have also sought the little pearl with earnest / and have also attained a jewel thereby; it has also been given to me / to recognize the first man in paradise / how he was before the fall / and after the fall / and I have also seen the property of paradise / but not in the outer man.

58. I also say / that the inner man has put on the kingdom of God / and lives in heaven in God / but there is still a great difference between the outer and inner man / also between us and the paradise-world: Paradise no longer greens through the earth; the Lord has cursed the earth / and the outer man dwells on the cursed earth / and eats the cursed fruit / he swallows the curse into himself: And therefore there is no complete perfection here in this world.

59. It comes indeed this far with man / when he enters into the new birth / that he can tame the outer man / that he must do what he does not like / for the inner takes the power from him / and penetrates him / as the gold in the coarse stone: But just as the coarseness on the stone / does not become gold / so also the earthly man does not become God: Otherwise