Het tweede boeck des auteurs, handelende van de drie principien

The fourth Chapter.

Of the true eternal nature: that is, of the innumerable, or infinite bearing, of the birth of the eternal Being, which is the Being of all Beings; from which has arisen, been born, and finally created, this World with the Stars and Elements, and everything that moves, stirs, and lives.

1. A small decorative initial letter A is adorned with floral and scroll-work motifs. Here I must encounter the bold ones, and those who are clever beforehand, who are yet but smothered in darkness, and know or understand nothing of the Spirit of God; and [I must] comfort them, together with the desiring God-loving Reader, and show a small door to the Heavenly being, in what manner he may a To stand or understand. understand these writings, before I proceed to the Chapter.

2. I know well, and my spirit and mind show me such, that many shall be offended b Or he sins greatly. at the simplicity and humility of the Author: because he wishes to write of such high things, many will think he has no power to do so, and he acts herein b entirely sinfully, and runs against God and his will: that a man would wish to speak and say what God is.

3. For it is lamentable that after our fall [in] Adam we continually let ourselves be deceived and made to believe by the Devil, as if we were not children of God and of his own being. He continually portrays to us, just as he did to Eve, the monstrous form upon which she gazed; and she became through her imagination an ignorant child of this world, entirely naked and bare. So he also does to us still continually; he wants to lead us into another image, just as he did to Eve, so that we should be ashamed before the light and the power of God, just as Adam and Eve did in Paradise, when they hid themselves behind the trees (that is, behind the monstrous form

upon which they gazed), when the Lord appeared in the center of the birth of their life and said, Where are you Adam? Then he spoke, I am naked and afraid; the same was nothing else than that his faith and knowledge of the Holy God was extinguished, because he saw in himself his monstrous form, which he had made for himself through his imagination and lust, through the Devil's representation and false persuasion to eat of the third Principle the material world, in which the fragility stands.

4. While he now saw, and also knew from the command of God, that he must die and break if he were to eat of the knowledge of good and evil, he continually imagined to himself that he was now no longer a child of God [and] not created from his own being out of the first Principle: he thought he was now merely a child of this world, because he saw his fragility, and additionally the monstrous image which he bore upon him: [and that] the Paradisiacal science, lust, and joy also failed him, as his Spirit and perfection were driven out of Paradise (that is, out of the second Principle of God, in which the light or the heart of God is born from eternity to eternity, from which the Holy Spirit goes out from the Father and Son), and that he no longer lived merely by the Word of God, but [now] ate and drank; namely, the c Or the maintenance or propagation. birth of his life stood from then on in the third Principle; that is, d Or in the government. in the kingdom of the Stars and Elements; of its power and fruits he must now eat and live: [thereupon] he thought, it is now finished with me, the noble image of God is broken. To this the Devil also continually showed him his fragility and mortality, and he himself could also see nothing else, since he had gone out of Paradise; that is, out of the unbreakable Holy e Or bearing. birth of God, in which he was God's e Holy image and child, in which God created him to remain eternally. And if the merciful love of God had not again shone in the center of the birth of his life and comforted him, he would have thought that he was f Or passed away. separated from the eternal Divine birth, and that he was no longer in God, nor God any longer in him, and that he was no longer of his being.

5. But the friendly love (that is the only begotten Son of God, or how I might put the same to be understood, the lovely fountain where the eternal light of God is born) rose up and grew green again in Adam in the center of the birth of his life, in the fifth form of his birth; g Or he became aware. there Adam recognized that he was not broken off from the Divine root, but was