Of the True Eternal Nature. Chapter 4. original: "Cap. iij." The page header says Chapter 3, but the text continues from Chapter 4 on the previous page.

37. Now you cannot bring forth anything further here to suggest that God might have sucked some matter from somewhere else to create the Devil. Otherwise, the Devil would be able to justify himself by saying that God had made him evil or out of evil matter. For He created him out of nothing, purely out of His own being, just as He did the other angels. As it stands written: "through Him and in Him are all things, and to Him alone is the kingdom, power, and glory, and all is in Him," as the Holy Scripture shows. And if that were not the case, then no sin would be attributed to the Devil or to humans, if they were not eternal and both in God and from God Himself.

z Or in the kingdom of the stars.

38. For an animal (which is created out of a physical matter) is not charged with sin, because its spirit does not reach the first Principle. Instead, it has its origin in the third Principle, in the elemental and z syderische sidereal or astral kingdom, in that which is corruptible. It does not touch the Godhead as the Devil and the soul of man do.

39. And if you cannot believe this, then take the Holy Scripture before you. It tells you that when man had fallen into sin, God sent His own heart, life, or light out of Himself into the flesh. The gate of the birth of his life—in which he had been united with the Godhead and from which he had broken away in the light—was set ablaze and reunited, though he had remained in the origin of the first Principle.

40. If the soul of man were not from God the Father out of His first Principle, but rather from some other matter, then He would not have turned the highest pledge, His own heart and light, toward him. As He Himself testifies: "I am the light of the world and the life of men." He certainly could have helped man in another way.

41. But what do you think He brought into the flesh to men when He came? Nothing other than what Adam and Mother Eve had lost in Paradise. That same thing the Serpent-treader brought back to the monstrous birth and ransomed man out of the elemental and syderische astral flesh-house, placing him back into Paradise, about which I will write extensively hereafter.

42. Therefore, if you now wish to think or speak of God, you must think that He is everything. Furthermore, you must observe the three Principles. In them, you shall find what God is. You shall find what Wrath, Devil, Hell, and Sin are. You shall find what Angel, Man, or Animal is, and how the creation follows, where everything has thus become

Chapter 4. Of the True Eternal Nature.

out of [the Principles]. You shall find the creation of the World.

a Understand: Satan.

b Or rest.

c The honor, lust, pleasure, and comfort of the world.

d Or do not let yourself be advised.

43. Only I wish to have faithfully warned you, Reader: if you are not on the way of the Prodigal Son who was returning to the Father, then leave my book unread. Otherwise, it will a suit you poorly. For the a Great Prince will not b rest from deceiving you. For before the children of God, he stands completely bare and naked in this book. Yet he is ashamed of the same, just like a person who, for doing evil, is made a laughingstock before all people. Therefore be warned: if the c delicate flesh is still too dear to you, then leave my book unread. If you do not d follow this, and misfortune comes upon you, I wish to be innocent. Blame no one but yourself. For what I presently acknowledge, I write for myself as a memorial. Yet God knows well what He intends to do, which is still somewhat hidden from me.

e Understand: what He intends with these writings.

44. While we can find nothing in all of nature that we might say "this is God" or "here is God," from which we could conclude that God might be a strange or foreign being; and since He Himself testifies that His is the kingdom and the power from eternity to eternity; and since He also calls Himself Father (but the Son is begotten from the loins of the Father): so we must seek Him in the origin, in the Principle from which the world was born and created in the beginning. And we can say nothing else than that the first Principle is God the Father Himself.

f Or the first blooming fountain.

g Or the sink-vein/source.

h As before on page 37.

i That is: the Devils and the Angels remained in the spiritual being at the time of their creation.

k Understand: the one Element.

l Or the soul now also stands eternally in the spirit.

45. Now one finds in the original source the most orderly and severe birth, namely: harshness, bitterness, and fire. There we cannot say that it is God. Yet it is the innermost f first source which is in God the Father, according to which He calls Himself an angry, fiery God. And that same g source (just as you find previously in the first three chapters of the originality of the eternal birth) is the first Principle. And that is God the Father in His h originality, from which this World has its beginning.

46. But the Angels, and the Devil, as well as the Soul of Man, are purely i out of that same Spirit. i The Devils and the Angels remained standing in that during the time of their becoming physical beings. And the soul of Man, at the time of the creation of the body, was breathed in by the Spirit of God into the root of the third principle. k And the soul is now also standing in that for eternity, in the eternal original being of God, inseparable and also unremovable. Just as the pure eternal birth and the unbreakable band of the Father never ends or perishes, so neither does such a Spirit.