Het tweede boeck des auteurs, handelende van de drie principien

of the third Chapter.

1. The Author has no power to speak of the birth of God, but of God our Father, how the eternal begetting is.
2. It is not good for us that we must know the earnest original begetting: yet we have that knowledge now as a high necessity in order to learn to know the Devil.
3. How the Author’s writing (of the eternal birth) must be understood: to what end his writing is directed: through the transgression of the Commandment, man became naked and bare.
4. Without knowing what the fall was, one speaks of it in vain.
5. In the greater part of the books of the theologians, there is only the history of the fall and of the new rebirth.
6. Our theologians forbid the investigation of the deep ground, what God is: what this prohibition is.
7. The Devil interrupts prayer: therefore he defends himself: how he misleads the theologians: they do not grant the seeing one the light.
8. Of the coming of the Bridegroom: the Beast shall stand bare.

9. How the birth of eternal nature is.
10. How the first form among the six begets only a quality like itself.
11. Harshness is the Mother of the other five forms.
12. How the fire-flash becomes the Father of light.
13. How the tone or the sound in every form announces the birth of the dear child.
14. Of the new birth in the harshness.
15. Of the birth in the bitterness.
16. Of the birth in the fire-source.
17. Of the birth where love is primary in all births.
18. Of the good tidings that the sound brings, when love is primary in love.
19. Of the begetting when the water-spirit is primary in its birth.

Of the infinite and uncountably manifold expansion or begetting of eternal Nature.

An ornamental drop cap 'L' at the start of the chapter text is decorated with foliage and floral patterns.

1. Reader, understand my writings rightly: we have no power to speak of the birth of God; for the same has never had any beginning from eternity: we only have power to speak of God our Father, what and how He is, how the eternal begetting working/operation is.

b Mixing, poisoning, or instilling.
c The evil will.

2. Even if it is not good for us that we must know the severe, earnest, and original begetting—into which science and knowledge, also feeling and comprehensibility, our first parents (through the Devil’s infection mixing/poisoning and deceit) brought us—we now have this knowledge as a high necessity, so that we may learn to know the Devil (who lives in the most severe birth): and to also learn to know our own enemy the evil will, which our first parents awakened and bequeathed to us, which we carry within us, and which we now are ourselves.

d Or through the instilling of the devil.
e Understand the fruit of the severe mother.

3. Even though I now write as if a beginning took place in the eternal birth, it is not so: but eternal nature begets itself thus without beginning; my writing must be understood in a creaturely way, like the birth of a man who is an image of God: although in the eternal being it is indeed so, yet it is without beginning and end: and my writing is only for the purpose that a man should learn to know himself, what he is, what he was in the beginning, how he was a very glorious, eternal, and holy man, who would never have known the gate of the severe birth in eternity, if he had not let himself lust after the same through the devil’s infection the instilling of the devil, and had not eaten of the same fruit the fruit of the severe mother which was forbidden to him, through which he became such a naked and bare man with an animal-like form, and lost the Heavenly garment of the power of God, and now lives in the kingdom of the Devil in the...