T HE learned, and almost all writers, have very much encumbered and mightily troubled their heads, to search, contrive and conceive in nature (and have brought forth many and sundry opinions) concerning how and of what the holy angels were created: And on the other side, what was that horrible fall of the great prince Lucifer, or how he became so base a wicked and fierce wrathful devil, from whence that evil quality should spring, or what drove him to it.
And though this ground and great mystery has remained hidden from the beginning of the world, and that human flesh and blood is not able to conceive or apprehend it.
Yet God, who created the world, will reveal himself now at the end; and all great mysteries will be manifested or revealed, to intimate that the great Day of Revelation and final Judgment is near, and daily to be expected.
On which will be restored again all that which has been lost through Adam, and in which the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of the devil, in this world, shall be severed asunder.
But how all this will be done God will reveal in the highest plainness and simplicity, so that no man will be able to oppose him.
Therefore every one should lift up his eyes, for his redemption draweth near, and not seek after riotous living and vain show, supposing it to be the best life here; whereas in their arrogance they sit in the midst of hell, to wait upon Lucifer as his guard.
Which they themselves shall suddenly be sure to see, with great terror, anguish and eternal despair, as also to their shame and scorn: of which the devils are a terrible example, who were once the fairest and brightest angels in heaven, as I shall reveal, write and manifest here following. I will suffer God's impulse, I am not able to withstand it.
Of the Divine Quality.
Since thou hast perceived, in the third chapter, the ground of the Ternary in the divine being, I shall here shew plainly the power and operation, as also the qualities or qualification, in the divine being; or from what the angels were properly and peculiarly created, or what their body and power are.
As I said before, all the powers or virtues are in God the Father, and no man with his sense and thoughts can reach to apprehend it. But in the stars and the elements, as also by all the creatures in the whole creation of this world, a man may clearly know it.
All power and virtue is in God the Father; and proceedeth also forth from him, as light, heat, cold, soft, gentle, sweet, bitter, sour, astringent or harsh, sound or noise, and much more that is not possible to be spoken or apprehended. All these are in God the Father, one in another as one power, and yet all these powers move in his exit or going forth.
But the powers in God do not operate or qualify in the same manner as in nature in the stars and elements, or in the creatures.
No, you must not conceive it so: For lord Lucifer by his elevation made the powers of impure nature thus burning, bitter, cold, astringent, sour, dark and unclean.
But in the Father all powers are mild and soft, like heaven, and very full of joy, for all the powers triumph in one another, and their voice or sound riseth up from eternity to eternity.
There is nothing in them but love, meekness, mercy, friendliness or courtesy; even such a triumphing, rising source or fountain of joy, wherein all the voices of heavenly joyfulness sound forth, so that no man is able to express it, nor can it be likened to anything.
But if a man will liken it to anything, it may nearest be likened to the soul of man, when kindled or enlightened by the Holy Ghost. See Chap. 3, v. 40.
For then it is thus joyful and triumphing, and all powers rise up in it and triumph, and so raise the bestial body that it trembleth: This is a true glimpse of the divine quality, as the quality is in God. But in God all is spirit.
In God the quality of water is not of such a running and qualifying condition or manner as it is in this world, but is a spirit, very bright, clear and thin, wherein the Holy Ghost riseth up, a mere power.
The bitter quality qualifieth in the sweet, and in the astringent (or harsh and sour) quality, and the love riseth up therein from eternity to eternity.
For the love in the light and clarity or glorious brightness goeth forth from the Heart or Son of God, in all the powers of the Father, and the Holy Ghost moveth in them all.
And this, in the deep of the Father, is like a divine SALITTER [SALNITRUM], which I must needs liken to the earth, which before its corruption was even such a Salitter.
But not so hard, cold, bitter, sour and dark, but like the deep, or like heaven, very clear and pure, wherein all powers were good, fair and heavenly; but that prince Lucifer thus spoiled them, as you will perceive here following.
This heavenly Salitter or powers one in another generate heavenly joyful fruits and colours; all manner of trees and plants, on which grow the fair, pleasant and lovely fruits of life.
There spring up also in these powers and virtues all manner of blossoms and flowers, with fair heavenly colours and smells.
They are of several tastes, each according to its quality and kind, very holy, divine and full of joy.
For every quality bears its own fruit: as in the corrupted murderous den or dark valley and dungeon of the earth there spring up all manner of earthly trees, plants, flowers and fruits.
Also within the earth grow curious precious stones, silver and gold; and these are a type of the heavenly generating or production.
Nature laboureth with its utmost diligence upon this corrupted dead earth, that it might generate heavenly forms and species or kinds; but it generateth only dead, dark and hard fruits, which are no more than a mere shadow or type of the heavenly.
Moreover, its fruits are altogether fierce or biting, bitter, sour, astringent or harsh and hot, also cold, hard and naught; they have scarce any spark or spice of goodness in them.
Their sap and spirit is mixed with hellish quality, their scent or smell is a very stink. Thus has lord Lucifer caused them to be; as I shall clearly shew hereafter.
Now when I write of trees, plants and fruits, you must not understand them to be earthly, like those that are in this world; for it is not my meaning that there shall grow in heaven such dead, hard trees of wood, or such stones as consist of an earthly quality.
No, but my meaning is heavenly and spiritual, yet truly and properly such: I mean no other thing than what I set down in the letter.
In the divine pomp and state two things are especially to be considered: First, the Salitter or the divine powers, which are moving, springing powers.
In that same power grows up and is generated fruit according to every quality and species or kind, viz. heavenly trees and plants, which without ceasing bear fruit, blossom fairly, and grow in divine power, so joyfully that I can neither speak it nor write it down;
But stammer it like a child that is learning to speak, and can by no means rightly call it forth to be known as the spirit giveth it.
The second form or property of heaven in the divine pomp or state is Mercurius or the sound, as in the Salitter of the earth there is the sound, whence there grows gold, silver, copper, iron and the like; of which men make all manner of musical instruments for sounding or for mirth, as bells, organpipes and other things that make a sound: There is likewise a sound in all the creatures upon earth, else all would be in stillness and silence.
By that sound all powers are moved in heaven, so that all things grow joyfully, and generate very beautifully: And as the divine power is manifold and various, so also the sound or Mercurius is manifold and various.
For when the powers spring up in God they touch and stir one another, and move one in another, and so there is a constant harmony, mixing or concert, from whence go forth all manner of colours.
In those colours grow all manner of fruits, which rise or spring up in the Salitter, and the Mercurius or sound mingleth itself therewith, and riseth up in all the powers of the Father, and then sounding and tunes rise up in the heavenly joyfulness.
If you should in this world bring many thousand sorts of musical instruments together, and all should be tuned in the best manner, most artificially, and the most skilful masters of music should play on them in concert together, all would be no more than the holdings and barkings of dogs, in comparison with the divine music, which riseth up through the divine sound and tunes from eternity to eternity.
Further, if thou wilt consider the heavenly divine pomp, state and glory, and conceive how it is, and what manner of sprouting, branching, delight and joy there is in it.
View this world diligently, and consider what manner of fruit, sprouts, and branches grow out of the Salitter of the earth, from trees, plants, herbs, roots, flowers, oils, wine, corn and whatever else there is that thy heart can find out; all is a type of the heavenly pomp.
For the earthly and corrupt nature has continually laboured from the beginning of its creation to this day to bring forth heavenly forms or shapes in the earth, as also in man and beasts; as men very well see that every year new arts are invented and brought to light, which has been constantly so from the beginning to this time.
But yet nature has not been able to bring forth heavenly power, virtue and qualities, therefore its fruit is half dead, corrupt and impure.
You must not think that in the divine pomp there come forth beasts, worms and other creatures in flesh, as in this world they do: No; but I mean only the wonderful proportion, power, virtue and comeliness of feature in them.
Nature laboureth with the utmost diligence in its power to produce heavenly figures, shapes or forms; as we see, in men, beasts, fowls and worms, as also in the increase or growth of the earth, that all things are done, shew and appear most perfectly and ingeniously.
For Nature would fain be delivered from this vanity, that it might procreate heavenly forms in the holy power.
For in the divine pomp go forth likewise all manner of sprouting and vegetation of trees, plants and all manner of fruit; and every one bears its own fruit, yet not in an earthly quality and kind, but in a divine quality, form and kind.
Those fruits are not of so dead, hard, bitter, sour and astringent a relish for food; nor do they rot and grow stinking, as those in this world do, but all consist in holy divine power.
Their constitution or composition is from divine power, from the Salitter and Mercurius of the divine pomp, and they are the food of the holy angels.
If man's abominable fall had not spoiled it he would have been feasted in such a manner in this world, and would have eaten in a twofold manner such fruits as indeed were presented to him in Paradise.
But the infectious lust, evil attraction or impulse of the devil, who had infected and spoiled the Salitter of which Adam was made, that brought man into an evil longing or lust to eat of both the qualities, the evil and the good, whereof I will write clearly here following, and demonstrate it.
Of the Creation of Angels.
The spirit sheweth plainly and clearly that, before the creation of angels, the divine being, with its rising and qualifying, was from eternity, and remained so in the creation of angels, as it is also at this day, and will so continue in and to eternity.
The space, room or place of this world, together with the creaturely heaven, which we behold with our eyes, as also the space or place of the earth and stars, together with the deep, was in such a form as still at this day it if in, aloft, above the heavens, in the divine pomp.
But it was [or became] in the creation of the angels, the kingdom of the great prince Lucifer: [Understand according to the second Principle, out of which he was thrust forth into the outermost, which also is the very innermost of all. ]
Who, by his proud elevation in his kingdom, kindled the qualities or the divine Salitter out of which he was made; [“Understand the centre of his nature, or the first Principle;"] and set it on fire.
Supposing thereby he would grow hugely and highly light and qualifying above the Son of God. But he became a fool; therefore this place or space, in its burning quality, could not subsist in God, whereupon the creation of this world ensued.
But this world at the end, in God's appointed time, will be set again into its first place, as it was before the creation of angels; and lord Lucifer will have a hole or dungeon for his eternal habitation therein, and he will remain eternally in his kindled quality, which will be an eternal, base, filthy, reproachful habitation, an empty, void dark valley or dungeon, a hole of fierceness or wrath.
Now observe,
God in his moving created the holy angels at once, not out of a strange matter, but out of himself, out of his own power and eternal wisdom.
But the philosophers had this opinion : as if God had made the angels out of the light only; but they erred therein, for the angels were made not only out of the light, but out of all the powers of God.
As I have shewn before, there are two things especially to be observed in the deep of God the Father; first, that the power, or all the powers of God the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, are very lovely, pleasant and various, and yet are all one in another as one power.
As the powers of all the stars rule in the air, so also in God; But with its operation every power in God sheweth itself severally and distinctly.
Then afterwards, that the sound is in every power, and the tone or tune of the sound is according to the quality of every power; and therein consisteth the total heavenly kingdom of joy. From this divine Salitter and Mercurius all angels are made, viz. out of the body of nature.
Question.
But thou may here ask, How are they made or generated, or in what way and manner?
Answer.
If I had the tongue of an angel, and thou hadst an angelical understanding, we might very finely discourse of it. But the spirit only seeth it, and the tongue cannot advance towards it. For I can use no other words than the words of this world; but now the Holy Ghost being in thee, thy soul will well apprehend it.
For behold, the total holy Trinity has with its moving composed, compacted or figured a body or image out of itself, like a little god, but not so fully or strongly going forth as the whole Trinity, yet in some measure according to the extent and capacity of the creatures.
For in God there is neither beginning nor end; but the angels have a beginning and end, but not circumscriptive, apprehensive, palpable or conclusive; for an angel can sometimes be great, and suddenly little again; their alteration is as swift as man's thoughts are. All qualities and powers are in an angel, as they are in the whole Deity
But thou must rightly understand this: They are made and compacted together, or figured, out of the Salitter and Mercurius, that is, out of the exit or excrescence.
Consider this similitude: Out of the sun and stars go forth the elements, and they make in the Salitter of the earth a living spirit, and the stars remain in their circle or sphere, and that spirit likewise getteth the quality of the stars.
But now the spirit, after its compaction, is a severed distinct thing, and has a substance of its own, as all the stars have; and the stars also are and remain severed and distinct things, each of them is free to itself.
Nevertheless the quality of the stars reigneth in the spirit; yet the spirit can and may raise or demerse itself in its own qualities, or may live in the influences of the stars, as it pleaseth: It is free, for it has got for its own the qualities which it has in itself.
And though it had them at the beginning from the stars, yet they are now its proper own: Just as a mother when she has the seed in herself, as long as she has it in her, and that it is a seed, it is hers; but when the seed is become a child, then it is no more the mother's, but is the child's proper own.
And though the child be in the mother's house, and the mother nourish the child with her food, and the child could not live without the mother, yet both the body and the spirit, which are generated out of the seed of the mother, are the child's proper own, and it retaineth its corporeal right to itself.
And in this manner it is with the angels, they also are all composed, framed or figured out of the divine seed, but every one has its own body to itself. Though they are in God's house, and feed on the fruit of their mother, out of which they were made, yet the bodies are their proper own.
But the quality externally without them, or externally without their bodies, viz. their mother, is not their propriety, as also their mother is not the child's propriety; also the mother's food is not the child's propriety; but the mother giveth it to the child out of love, seeing she has generated the child.
She may well also thrust the child out of her house, when the child is stubborn, and will not be obedient, and may withdraw her food from it, which also thus befell the principality of Lucifer.
Thus God may withdraw his divine power, which is externally without the angels, when they elevate themselves against him; but when that is done, a spirit must pine away and perish.
As when the air, which also is man's mother, is withdrawn from a man, he must needs die; so also the angels cannot live without their mother.