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

branch, but a little branch does not say: I am the tree. Rather, it rejoices in the tree as in its mother.

75. So, when we put on Christ, we are rightly called Christians, for the new man lives in Christ. But we should not say: I am Christ, in this my holy flesh and bones, in this my visible walk on earth. For Christ also said: My kingdom is not of this world. Thus, the kingdom of Christ in us is even less of this world. For He said: I have gone out and come from God; I leave the world again and go to the Father, and I will take you to me so that you may be where I am.

76. Thus understand, when the noble seed is sown, that the little lily-branch is born in the humanity of Christ, then He takes it to Himself where He is. This noble little branch is not of this world, but it comes from God, and its growth grows in the kingdom of God, not in this world, not in the manhood of Adam, and also not in the woman Eve, but in the virgin; not a man nor a woman, but a chaste virgin who follows God and the Lamb.

77. For that is the angel of whom Christ speaks in Matthew 22: In the resurrection they are like the angels of God. When one is born from Christ, he does not wait for a resurrection for himself, for he is immortal, provided the soul does not poison him in the time of this world. Rather, he waits for the outer mysterium, as the third principle. In that, he has sown all his wonders and works. This same thing devours the outer life here with its deeds; that shall come again from the mysterium.

78. For the first Adam before his Eve, when he was neither man nor woman, shall stand; he shall have all three principles in himself, as God Himself, but not mixed as it is now, where one is introduced into the other.

79. The outer world was grasped and born out of the inner in the inner desire, and was created into a form in the fiat the creative divine command, not entirely into a perishable being, for it was to be renovated in the fire and stand again for the wonderful deed of God: not four elements, but one, within which the four lie hidden. For the outer world shall not rule, but the inner divine world through all.

80. Just as little as the outer visible world can be called God, so little does the name of God befit the outer life in