The Way to Divine Knowledge

being several

Dialogues between

Humanus, Academicus, Rusticus, and Theophilus

As preparatory to a new edition of the works of Jacob Behmen; and the
right use of them

by William Law, A.M.

London

Printed for W. Innys, and J. Richardson, in Pater-noster Row

1752

The First Dialogue

between

Humanus, Academicus, Rusticus, and Theophilus.

 Page 1

[Way-1-1] Humanus.  Oh!  Theophilus, I must yield, and it is with great
pleasure that I now enter into conversation with you.  You have taken
from me all power of cavilling and disputing.  I have no opinions that I
choose to maintain, but have the utmost desire of entering further into
this field of light, which you have so clearly opened to my view.  I
shall not trouble you with the relation of what has passed in my soul,
nor what struggles I have had, with that variety of heathenish notions
which have had their turn in my mind.  It is better to tell you, that
they are dead and buried, or rather consumed to nothing by that new
light, which you have opened in so many great points, that I was quite a
stranger to before.  To reject all that you have said concerning the
fall of angels, the original of this world, the creation and fall of
man, and the necessity of a redemption, as great as that of the gospel,
is impossible; nothing can do it, or stand out against it, but the most
willful and blind obstinacy.

[Way-1-2] But these great points cannot be received in any true degree,
without seeing the vain contention of all those, who either defend or
oppose the gospel without any true and real knowledge of them.  The one
contend for, and the other oppose, not the gospel, but a system of empty
words, and historical facts, branched into forms and modes of dividing
one church from another; whereas the gospel is no history of any absent,
distant, or foreign thing, but is a manifestation of an essential,
inherent, real life and death in every son of Adam; grounded on the
certainty of his first angelical nature, on the certainty of his real
fall from that into an animal earthly life of impure, bestial flesh and
blood, and on the certainty of an inward redemption from it, by the
divine nature given again into him.  These three great points, with all
the doctrines, duties, and consequences, that are essentially contained
in, or flow from them, are the gospel of Jesus Christ, to which, by your
means, I am become a convert.  I am now, dear Theophilus, strongly drawn
two different ways.  First, I am all hunger and thirst after this new
light, a glimpse of which has already raised me, as it were, from the
dead; and I am in the utmost impatience to hear more and more of this
divine philosophy, which, I so plainly see, opens all the mysteries both
of nature and grace from the beginning to the end of time.  What I have
heard from you, when I was obliged to be silent, and what I have since
found and felt by much reading the Appeal, and that Dialogue, obliges me
to speak in this ardent manner.  They have awakened something in me
which I never felt before, something much deeper than my reason, and
over which I have no power; it glows in my soul, like a fire, or hunger,
which nothing can satisfy, but a further view of those great truths,
which I this day expect from your opening to us the mysteries of heaven
revealed to that wonderful man, Jacob Behmen.

[Way-1-3] On the other hand, I find in myself a vehement impulse to turn
preacher amongst my former infidel brethren; which impulse I know not
how to resist: For being just converted myself, I seem to know, and feel
the true place, from whence conversion is to arise in others; and by the
reluctance which I have felt in my passage from one side to the other, I
seem also to know the true ground on which infidelity supports itself.
And he only is able to declare with spirit and power any truths, or bear
a faithful testimony of the reality of them, who preaches nothing but
what he has first seen, and felt, and found to be true, by a living
sensibility and true experience of their reality and power in his own
soul.  All other preaching, whether from art, hearsay, books, or
education, is, at best, but playing with words, and mere trifling with
sacred things.  Being thus divided in myself, I hope to have your
direction.

[Way-1-4] Theophilus.  Dear Humanus, my heart embraces you with great
joy, and I am much pleased with what you say of yourself.  This hunger
of your soul is all that I wish for; it is the fire of God, the opening
of eternity, the beginning of your redemption, the awakener of the
angelic life, the root of an omnipotent faith, and the true seeker of
all that is lost.  For all these things, and much more, are the blessed
powers which will soon break forth, and show themselves to be the true
workings of this celestial fire, that has begun to glow within you.

[Way-1-5] Your business is now to give way to this heavenly working of
the Spirit of God in your soul, and turn from everything either within
you, or without you, that may hinder the farther awakening of all that
is holy and heavenly within you.  For within you is that heavenly angel
that died in paradise, and died no other death, than that of being hid a
while from your sight and sensibility.

[Way-1-6] For be assured of this, as a certain truth, that corrupt,
fallen, and earthly as human nature is, there is nevertheless in the
soul of every man, the fire, and light, and love of God, though lodged
in a state of hiddenness, inactivity, and death, till something or
other, human or divine, Moses and the prophets, Christ or his apostles,
discover its life within us.

[Way-1-7] For the soul of every man is the breath and life of the triune
God, and as such a partaker of the divine nature; but all this divinity
is unfelt, because overpowered by the workings of flesh and blood, till
such time as distress, or grace, or both, give flesh and blood a shock,
open the long shut-up eyes, and force a man to find something in
himself, that sense and reason, whilst at quiet were not aware of.
Wonder not therefore at this conflict in your soul, that you are eager
after more light, and impatient to communicate that which you have.  For
you must be thus driven; and both these desires are only two witnesses
to this truth, that a heaven-born spirit is come to life in you.

[Way-1-8] Only remember this; look well to the ground on which you
stand, keep a watchful eye upon every working of nature, and take care
that nothing human, earthly, private, or selfish, mix with this heavenly
fire: that is, see that your mind be free, universal, impartial, without
regard to here or there, this or that, but loving all goodness,
practicing every virtue, for itself, on its own account, because it is
so much of God; neither coveting light, nor longing to communicate it to
others, but merely and solely for this reason, that the will of God may
be done, and the goodness of God brought to life both in you and them.
For there is no goodness but God's; and his goodness is not alive, or
fruitful in you, but so far, and in such degree, as the good that you
mean, and do, is done in and by that Spirit, by which God himself is
good.  For as there is but one that is good, so there is, and can be but
one goodness.  And therefore it is, that we are called not to an human,
worldly, prudential, partial goodness, suitable to our selfish reason,
and natural tempers, but to be perfect, as our Father in heaven is
perfect.  And the full reason is expressed in the words; for if our
Father is in heaven, we must be there too in spirit and life, or we are
not his children; if heaven is that for which we are made, and that
which we have lost, it is not any human goodness, but a heavenly birth
and Spirit of God's own goodness, working in us, as it does in God, that
can make us the heavenly children of our Father in heaven.  You must
love the light of God, as God loves it; you must desire that others may
enjoy it, as God desires it.  Now God is a free, universal, impartial
love, loving and doing every kind of good, for its own sake, because
that is the highest and most perfect working of life; and because
everything else but goodness, for its own sake, is imperfect, and a
degree of evil, misery, and death.  And no creature can come out of its
imperfection, misery, and death, but by the pure, free, unmixed goodness
of God, being born in it.  Though you had outwardly all virtues, and
seemed doing all that the saints of God have done, yet unless the same
Spirit, by which God himself is good, brought forth your goodness, all
would be only an earthly labor, that could have no communication with
heaven.

[Way-1-9] Therefore, my friend, set out right, and be assured of this
truth, that nature, and self, and every particular view, must be totally
renounced; or else, be your zeal what it will, ever so pleasing to
yourself, or astonishing to the world, you are not working with God.

[Way-1-10] Here now you have the test of truth, by which you may always
know, whether it be the Spirit of God, and the love of God, that drives
you.  If your zeal is after this pure, free, universal goodness of God,
then of a truth the Spirit of God breatheth in you; but if you feel not
the love of this pure, free, universal goodness, and yet think that you
love God, you deceive yourself; for there is no other true love of God,
but the loving that, which God is.

[Way-1-11] But if you please, Humanus, pray tell me, in what manner you
would attempt to make converts to Christianity.

[Way-1-12] Humanus.  I would not take the method generally practiced by
the modern defenders of Christianity.  I would not attempt to show from
reason and antiquity, the necessity and reasonableness of a divine
revelation in general, or of the Mosaic and Christian in particular.
Nor enlarge upon the arguments for the credibility of the gospel-
history, the reasonableness of its creeds, institutions, and usages; or
the duty of man to receive things above, but not contrary to, his
reason.  I would avoid all this, because it is wandering from the true
point in question, and only helping the Deist to oppose the gospel with
a show of argument, which he must necessarily want, was the gospel left
to stand upon its own bottom.

[Way-1-13] And, on the other hand, should the Deist yield up such a
cause as this, and change sides, he could only be said to have changed
his opinion about facts, without any more altering or bettering his
state in God, than if he had only altered his opinion about things in
dispute amongst the ancient philosophers.

[Way-1-14] For since the fall of man, implying a real change from his
first state, or a total death to his first created life, since the
necessity of a new birth of that lost life, by the life of God again
restored to, or born in the soul, are two points, quite overlooked by
those who defend the truth and reasonableness of the Christian scheme,
it may be truly said, that the only ground, and the whole nature of the
gospel is quite dropped and given up by those who thus defend it.

[Way-1-15] For the gospel has but one ground, or reason, and that is the
fall of man, it has but one nature, and that is to help man again to all
that he had lost.

[Way-1-16] How unreasonable would it be, to offer the Christian
redemption to glorious angels in heaven?  Could anything be more
inconsistent with their heavenly, unfallen state?  Yet just so
unreasonable would it be to offer it to man unfallen from his first
created state--for man standing in that first perfection of life, which
God breathed into him, and in that very outward state, or world, into
which God himself brought him, wants no more redemption, than the most
glorious angels do; and to preach to such a man, in order to be
reconciled to God, the necessity of dying to himself, and the world he
is in, would be as contrary to all sense and reason, as to preach to
angels the necessity of dying to themselves, their divine life and the
kingdom of heaven, for which God had created them.

[Way-1-17] Thus does it appear, that the fall of man, into the life of
this earthly world, is the sole ground of his wanting the redemption,
which the gospel offers.

[Way-1-18] Hence it is that the gospel has only one simple proposal of
certain life, or certain death to man; of life, if he will take the
means of entering into the kingdom of God, of death if he chooses to
take up his rest in the kingdom of this world.  This is the simple
nature, and sole drift of the gospel; it means no more, than making
known to man, that this world, and the life of it, is his fall, and
separation from God, and happiness, both here and hereafter: and that to
be saved or restored to God and happiness, can only be obtained, by
renouncing all love, and adherence to the things of this world.  Look at
all the precepts, threatenings and doctrines of the gospel, they mean
nothing, but to drive all earthly-mindedness and carnal affections out
of the soul, to call man from the life, spirit and goods of this world,
to a life of hope, and faith, and trust, and love and desire of a new
birth from heaven.

[Way-1-19] To embrace the gospel is to enter with all our hearts into
its terms of dying to all that is earthly both within us, and without
us; and on the other hand to place our faith, and hope, and trust, and
satisfaction in the things of this world, is to reject the gospel with
our whole heart, spirit and strength, as much as any infidel can do,
notwithstanding we made ever so many verbal assents and consents to
everything that is recorded in the New Testament.

[Way-1-20] This therefore is the one true essential distinction between
the Christian and the infidel.  The infidel is a man of this world,
wholly devoted to it, his hope and faith are set upon it; for where our
heart is, there, and only there is our hope and faith.  He has only such
virtues, such goodness, and such a religion, as entirely suits with the
interest of flesh and blood, and keeps the soul happy in the lust of the
flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life: this, and this
alone, is infidelity, a total separation from God, and a removal of all
faith, and hope from him, into the life of this world.  It matters not,
whether this infidel be a professor of the gospel, a disciple of
Zoroaster, a follower of Plato, a Jew, a Turk, or an opposer of the
gospel-history: this difference of opinions or professions alters not
the matter, it is the love of the world instead of God, that constitutes
the whole nature of the infidel.

[Way-1-21] On the other hand, the Christian renounces the world, as his
horrid prison; he dies to the will of flesh and blood, because it is
darkness, corruption, and separation from God; he turns from all that is
earthly, animal, and temporal, and stands in a continual tendency of
faith, and hope, and prayer to God, to have a better nature, a better
life and spirit born again into him from above.

[Way-1-22] Where this faith is, there is the Christian, the new creature
in Christ, born of the Word and Spirit of God; neither time nor place,
nor any outward condition of birth, and life, can hinder his entrance
into the kingdom of God.

[Way-1-23] But where this faith is not, there is the true, complete
infidel, the man of the earth, the unredeemed, the rejector of the
gospel, the son of perdition, that is dead in trespasses and sins,
without Christ, an alien from the commonwealth of Israel, a stranger
from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the
world.

[Way-1-24] Here therefore I fix my true ground of converting men to
Christianity; and how miserably, may I say, do they err, who place
Christianity and infidelity in anything else, but in the heart either
devoted to this world, or devoted to God!

[Way-1-25] He therefore that opens a field of controversy to the Deist,
about revelation in general, of the history of facts, creeds, and
doctrines of churches, not only leads him from the merits of the gospel,
but brings him into a field of battle, where he may stand his ground as
long as he pleases.  This I can truly say from my own experience, who
have been 20 years in this dust of debate; and have always found that
the more books there were written in this way of defending the gospel,
the more I was furnished with new objections to it, and the less
apprehensive of any danger from my not receiving it.

[Way-1-26] For I had frequently a consciousness rising up within me,
that the debate was equally vain on both sides, doing no more real good
to the one than to the other, not being able to imagine, that a set of
scholastic, logical opinions about history, facts, doctrines, and
institutions of the church, or a set of logical objections against them,
were of any significancy toward making the soul of man either an eternal
angel of heaven, or an eternal devil of hell.  And therefore it was,
that I was often tempted rather to think, there was neither heaven, nor
hell, than to believe that such a variety of churches, and systems of
opinion, all condemning, and all condemned by one another, were to find
the heaven of God opened to receive them, but he who was equally led by
opinion to reject them all, was doomed to hell.  But you, sir (and how
can I thank you for it?)  have put a full end to all this vain strife of
opinions floating in the brain; you have dispersed the clouds that
surrounded my bewildered mind; you have brought me home to myself, where
I find heaven and hell, life and death, salvation and damnation at
strife within me; you have shown me the infinite worth of Christianity,
and the dreadful nature of infidelity, not by helping me to a new
opinion, for my reason to maintain, but by proving to me this great and
decisive truth, that Christianity is neither more nor less, than the
goodness of the divine life, light and love, living and working in my
soul; and that infidelity in its whole nature, is purely and solely the
heart of man living in, governed by, and contented with the evil
workings of the earthly life, spirit and nature.

[Way-1-27] This is the infidelity that you have forced me to fly from,
and renounce, and that is the Christianity, to which I am converted with
all the strength of my heart and spirit.  Away then with all the
fictions and workings of reason, either for, or against Christianity!
They are only the wanton sport of the mind, whilst ignorant of God, and
insensible of its own nature and condition.  Death and life are the only
things in question; life is God, living and working in the soul; death
is the soul living and working according to the sense and reason of
bestial flesh and blood.  Both this life, and this death are of their
own growth, growing from their own seed within us, not as busy reason
talks or directs, but as our heart turns either to the one or the other.

[Way-1-28] But, dear Theophilus, I must now tell you that I want to make
haste in this new road you have put me in.  Time is short, I am afraid
of leaving the world, before I have left all worldly tempers, and before
the first holy and heavenly birth be quickened, and brought to life in
me.

[Way-1-29] An angel my first father was created, and therefore nothing
but the angel belongs to man, and nothing but the angel can enter into
heaven.  Angelic goodness, therefore, is the one thing that man must
look up into God for, because it is the one goodness that he has lost.
Everything else, flesh and blood, earth and all earthly tempers,
everything that had its rise from the fall of Adam, must be renounced,
and given up to death, that the first angelic glory of the life of God
in man may be again found in him.

[Way-1-30] Theophilus.  Indeed, Humanus, you have made great haste
already; for all the haste that we can make, consists in a total dying
to all the tempers and passions which we have received from the spirit
of this world, by our fall into it.  And the more watchfully, earnestly,
and constantly, we do this, the more haste we make to our lost country,
and heavenly glory.

[Way-1-31] It is no extravagance, or overstraining the matter, when we
say, that our goodness must be angelic; for no goodness less than that,
can be divine and heavenly, or help us to a life in heaven.  It is often
said, that we are poor, infirm men, and not angels; and therefore must
be content with the poverty and infirmity of human virtues.  That we are
poor, infirm men, is undeniable; but this is the one infallible reason,
why a virtue that is according to our nature, or of its own growth, can
do us no good.  We were not created poor and infirm men by God, but have
lost him, are separated from him; full of misery, because we have
changed our first state, and brought all this poverty, corruption, and
infirmity, upon ourselves.  And therefore, as this infirmity is from
ourselves, so we must intend nothing less, or short of the total removal
of it, nor think that we have our proper goodness, till we stand in that
degree of it, in which God created us.  For, be assured of this great
truth, that nothing in us can be the delight of God, but that very
creature, which he created.  All therefore must be parted with, that God
hath not created and brought to life in us.  And no goodness but that of
an angel, can overcome the evil that is in us, or do the will of God on
earth, as it is done in heaven, which is the only goodness in and for
which God created us.

[Way-1-32] Academicus.  Pray, Theophilus, give me leave to say, that I
should think it better, not to insist so much upon the word "angelic,"
when you speak of the goodness, that ought to be ours.  For it seems to
me too liable to objection.  We have not the high faculties, and exalted
powers, of angels; and therefore our goodness cannot rise up to an
equality with theirs.

[Way-1-33] Rusticus.  Pray, Academicus, give me leave also to say, that
if your learning did not lead you to mind words, more than things, you
could not have fallen into this critical scruple.  For our call to
angelic goodness does not suppose or require any high stretch, or
refined elevation, of our intellectual faculties and powers.  A shepherd
watching over his flock, a poor slave digging in the mines, may each of
them, though so employed to the end of their lives, stand before God in
a degree of goodness truly angelic.  On the other hand, you may spend
all your time in high speculations, writing and preaching upon Christian
perfection, composing seraphic hymns of heavenly matters, with a
strength of thought and genius that delights both yourself and others,
and yet, so doing to the day of your death, have only a goodness like
that of eating and drinking that which most pleases your palate.

[Way-1-34] Would you know the true nature of angelic goodness, see how
the Spirit of Christ speaks, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, soul, and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself.  I came into
the world not to do my own will, not to seek my own glory or honor, not
to have a kingdom in this world, but to promote the kingdom of God, and
do the will of my Father in heaven.  My meat and drink is to do the will
of him that sent me.  When thou makest a feast, call not thy rich
friends and acquaintance, but the poor, the lame, and blind, &c.
Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory and
praise of God.  Thus speaks the Spirit of Christ; and he that in this
Spirit thus lives, is an angel, whether he be in heaven, or enclosed in
flesh and blood.  And all of us are in the way of attaining to this
angelic goodness, as soon as we hate the selfish tempers of our own
earthly life, and earnestly long, in the spirit of prayer, to have the
life of God brought forth in us.  Now this goodness we must have, or we
have none at all; for there is but one God, one good, and one goodness;
and it is rightly called angelic, because nothing is capable of it, but
the heavenly angelic nature; nor can it have any existence in man, till
the workings of our earthly nature are overcome, and brought into
subjection to that Spirit, which is not of man, but from heaven.  For
flesh and blood in all its workings can work only for itself; darkness
can only be dark, it has no other nature; coldness can only be cold;
earth can only be earthly; and the works of light can only proceed from
light.  Flesh and blood, or that life which is only from the stars and
elements of this world, can only work as the stars and elements work,
only for time, and a corruptible life; it can only be bestial, and serve
the end of a bestial life; it is insensible and incapable of divine
virtue, and is, and can be of no higher a nature in a man, than in a
beast, and must have the same end in both.  It is quite incapable of
entering into the kingdom of God; and only for this reason, because it
is absolutely incapable of having any true and heavenly goodness.  It
has then only its proper goodness, when it has lost its power of acting,
and is governed by a spirit superior to it; whilst it lives and rules,
it can only live to itself; is nothing but an earthly own will, own
love, own honor, own interest, never rising higher, doing better, or
coming any nearer to goodness, than its own pride or covetousness, envy
or wrath, can carry it.  For these tempers, with all their lesser
subdivisions, are the atmosphere that sets bounds to the breath of the
earthly life; they are essential to it, and as inseparable from it, as
hardness and darkness are inseparable from a rock of stone.  So long as
the stony rock lasts, so long is it hard and dark.  And so long as
earthly flesh and blood lives and acts, it can only live and act for
itself; it can seek, love, like, or do no manner of thing, but as its
own will, own love, own interest, is some way or other felt, and found
in it.  Would you know the true ground and reason of this?  It is
because no life can go out of, or farther than itself; nor can it will
anything, but what its own life is.  This is absolutely true of every
life, whether it be divine, earthly, or hellish; it can seek, love, and
delight in nothing, but that which is according to its own life.

[Way-1-35] See here, Academicus, the folly of your quarrelling with the
word "angelic," since the thing itself, angelic goodness, is absolutely
necessary; it is the goodness of our first creation, and must be the
goodness of our redemption.  The falling from it has brought forth all
the evils that we are surrounded with, and nothing can deliver us from
the death of our fallen state, but a true and full resurrection of all
that purity and goodness, which was living in the first creation of man.
To be content with our infirmities, is to be content with our separation
from God; and not to aspire after the one angelic goodness, is to be
carnally-minded, which we are told is death, that is, death to the one
divine life.

[Way-1-36] A virtue that is only according to the state of this earthly
life, is a virtue of art, and human contrivance, a fiction of behavior,
modelled according to rule and custom, or education, that can go no
deeper, nor rise higher, nor reach farther, than the sense and reason,
and interests of flesh and blood, can carry it.  But this can have no
communication with God and heaven, because it is not born of them, but
is a lower, separate state of life, that at best can only bring forth a
civility of outward manners, little better than such a new birth as may
be had from a dancing-master.  But the goodness which we want, and which
we were created to have, is the one holy blessed life of God, and
Christ, and heaven, living in the soul.  For from eternity to eternity,
there never was, or ever can be, any other heavenly goodness in any
creature, but the life, and Spirit, and Word of God, speaking, living,
and breathing in it.

[Way-1-37] Bid the anatomist, that can skillfully dissect an human body,
that can tell you the names, nature, and offices of most of its parts,
that can show you how they all conspire to give life, strength, and
motion, to the living machine: bid him, I say, put life into the dead
carcase.

[Way-1-38] Now learned reason, when pretending to be a master of
morality, is just as powerful as this very anatomist.  It can skillfully
dissect a dead system of morality, can separate all its parts, tell you
the names, nature, distinctions, and connections, of most kinds of good
and evil.  But when this is done, learned reason, with all its dictates,
distinctions, and definitions, can do just as much good to the soul,
that has lost its goodness, as the anatomist can do to the carcase, that
has lost its life.

[Way-1-39] It is wonderfully astonishing, that you men of learning
seldom come thus far, as to see, and feel this glaring truth, that
goodness must be a living thing; but, blinded with the empty sounds of
words in variety of languages, are as content and happy with a religion
of nature delineated, or book of axioms, maxims, and deductions,
mathematically placed one after another, as if you had really found the
tree of life.  Whereas, in truth, all this is no better than the reading
a lecture upon the use of the heart, liver, and lungs, to a dead
carcase: for the life of goodness can no more be raised, or brought into
the soul, by this art of reasoning, than life can be brought into the
carcase, by a discourse upon the heart, live, and lungs, made over it.

[Way-1-40] Oh!  Academicus, forget your scholarship, give up your art
and criticism, be a plain man, and then the first rudiments of sense may
teach you, that there, and there only, can goodness be, where it comes
forth as a birth of life, and is the free natural work and fruit of that
which lives within us.  For till goodness thus comes from a life within
us, we have in truth none at all.  For reason, with all its doctrine,
discipline, and rules, can only help us to be so good, so changed, and
amended, as a wild beast may be, that by restraints and methods is
taught to put on a sort of tameness, though its wild nature is all the
time only restrained, and in a readiness to break forth again as
occasion shall offer.

[Way-1-41] Thus far the masters of morality and human discipline may go;
they may tame and reform the outward man, clothe him with the appearance
of many images of virtue, which will, some or all of them, be put off,
just as time, occasion, and flesh and blood, require it.  For the
goodness of a living creature must be its own life; it must arise up in
it as its own love, or any passion doth; just as the fierceness of the
tiger, and the meekness of the lamb, are the birth of their own life.
And if goodness is not our natural birth from our natural parents, we
must of all necessity be born again from a principle above nature, or no
goodness can be living in us.  Now since goodness is a life, we have a
twofold proof, that no goodness can be living in us, till we are born
again of the Word and Spirit of God: for nature, as well as scripture,
assures us, that God is originally the one good, and the one life; and
therefore no good life can possibly be in us, but by the Word, life, and
Spirit, of God having a birth in us.  And from this birth alone it is,
that the free, genuine works of goodness flow forth with the freedom of
the divine life, wherewith the Spirit of God has made us free; loving
and doing all manner of good, merely for goodness-sake; virtuous in all
kind of virtue, purely for virtue-sake: then we are the natural true
children of our heavenly Father, and do the works of heaven with a
cheerful and willing mind.  Then it is, that we are good in the manner
as God is good, because it is his goodness that is born in us; we are
perfect as he is perfect, we love as he loves, are patient as he is
patient, we give as he gives, we forgive as he forgives, and resist evil
only with good as he does.

[Way-1-42] This, Academicus, is angelic goodness; and is the goodness of
those who are born again of the Word, and become new creatures in the
Spirit of Christ.  This goodness our first father lost, when he chose to
have the eyes of flesh and blood, and the spirit of this world, opened
in him; and therefore our redeemer, who well knew what we had lost, and
must have again, has taught us in our daily prayer, to ask for angelic
goodness in these words, viz., "thy kingdom come, thy will be done on
earth, as it is in heaven."  But I have done, and I think you must have
done, with your learned scruple about the word "angelic."  And now,
Theophilus, if you please, return to your subject with Humanus.

[Way-1-43] Theophilus.  Let me then tell you, Humanus, that I much
approve of the way that you intend to proceed in.  You are come directly
to the truth and heart of the matter, and have hit upon the one only
method of putting Deism to a full stand, by reducing Christianity to
this one single great point, which so evidently contains the whole
ground and nature of it.

[Way-1-44] Now this one great point consists of two essential parts;
1st, the fall of man from a divine angelic life into an earthly,
bestial, corruptible, miserable life of this world.  2dly, the
redemption of man, or his regaining his first angelic perfection, by a
new birth of the divine nature, by the Word and Spirit of God.  Stand
steadily upon this true Christian ground; and then you will not only
stand safely yourself, but you will have left the Deist no ground to
stand upon.  For here all the labored volumes of infidelity, with which
these last ages have swarmed, are at once rendered useless, and cannot
put so much as a little finger into this debate.  Consult all, from
Hobbes to the Moral Philosopher, and you consult in vain; their works
are as dead as themselves, and unable to give forth one word against
this Christianity.  They had a much easier task upon their hands; for
nothing can be easier than for reason to object, and continue objecting,
to the extraordinary matters of the Old and New Testament.  I don't
mention this as an accusation of the Deists, or to charge them with the
crafty contrivance of placing the merits of the cause where it is not.
No the learning of the Christian world must bear the blame of the
fruitless disputes: the demonstrators of the truth and reasonableness of
Christianity have betrayed their own cause, and left true Christianity
unmentioned in their defenses of it.  What a reasonableness of
Christianity have some great names helped us to?  Just as useful, and
good to our fallen souls, as the reasonableness of consenting to the
death of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea.  But you, my friend, being
rightly converted to Christianity, that began before the scriptures were
written, and is as old as the creation and fall of man; keep close to
its true and real ground; and, instead of showing the reasonableness of
believing a long history of things, show the absolute necessity of man's
dying to his present life, in order to have a better from God.  This is
the Christianity that began with the fall, and has been preached ever
since to every son of fallen man, in every corner of the world; and by
the same preacher that tells every man, that he ought to be better than
he is.  For was not man fallen from a better state than that he is now
in, he could no more be ashamed or offended at anything that his nature
prompts him to do, than the ox is ashamed at breaking into a good
pasture.  Every man, therefore, from the beginning of the world, has had
Christianity and the gospel written and preached within him; as it
contains the fall of man, and his want of being raised to a better
state.  But as we see, that the truth and reality of his fall, and the
truth and reality of his redemption by a real birth from above, can be
lost, nay disowned, amongst those that are daily reading and expounding
the scriptures; so it is no wonder that the same should have happened to
those, who had no scriptures to read.  Justly therefore, Humanus, are
churches and creeds, doctrines above and contrary to reason, miracles of
the Old and New Testament, and all historical facts and matters, which
are so great an harvest to the Deists; justly, I say, are they removed
by you out of the debate; and the one great point abovementioned only
insisted upon, as the whole of the matter.  For this one point gained,
all is gained; and, till this point is cleared up, all the rest is but a
debate about nothing.

[Way-1-45] For if man is fallen from a divine life, no one need be told,
that he can only be redeemed or saved from his fall by having the same
divine life born in him again, or a second time.  Nothing therefore
touches the truth of the debate betwixt the Christian and the infidel,
but that which proves with certainty, that man has, or has not, lost a
divine life.

[Way-1-46] If he is thus fallen, has died this death to a divine life;
then the nature and necessity of the Christian new-birth sufficiently
proves itself.  But if it can be proved, that he is not thus fallen, but
stands in that state and degree of life in which God created him; the
Deists have reason enough to reject the Christian scheme of redemption.

[Way-1-47] Strange it is therefore beyond expression, that every man,
whether Christian or infidel, should not see, that here lies the whole
of the matter; or that any learned defender of Christianity should think
of beginning anywhere, or in anything, but where the redemption itself
begins; or imagine there can be the least ground to propose a redemption
to man, till he shows why, and from what, he is to be redeemed.
Stranger is it still, if you consider, that Christians have nothing to
excuse their wandering from this one great point, since both the
Testaments bear so open a witness to it.  "In the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die," says the Old Testament.  "Except a man
be born again from above, of the Word and Spirit of God, he cannot enter
into the kingdom of heaven," says the New Testament.

[Way-1-48] Thus do these two Testaments begin with the most open
declarations of these two things; viz., the death of man to his first
created life; 2ndly, his redemption only and solely by a real birth of
the divine life, received again from above.  What excuse therefore can
be made for those who read the scripture, and yet overlook that very one
point; not only so plainly declared, but which, in itself, is the one
only ground and foundation upon which all the scripture stands?  For had
not man died, neither Moses, nor the prophets, had ever been in being.
For man not fallen, but abiding in his first created perfection of life,
had been as free from any outward law, as the light is from darkness.
The keeping his own nature had been the keeping, and doing, and seeing,
and knowing all that God required of him.  So that neither law nor
prophecy have any ground or reason, but because man is dead to his first
life.

[Way-1-49] But seeing man is dead to his first life, and living only in
an earthly bestial world, under the power and slavery of the evil
motions and tempers of gross flesh and blood; therefore Moses must come
with his law, to set sin before him, and give him precepts of resisting
and dying to all the lusts of this new earthly life, which he is fallen
into: therefore, to seek for any other learning in or from Moses, than
that of learning to resist and die to the tempers and passions of this
earthly life, is knowing nothing right of Moses, nor of ourselves.

[Way-1-50] Next after Moses came the prophets, or the spirit of
prophecy, with its far-seeing sight, and declaration of glories to come.
Now the ground of prophecy is this, it is because man is to be restored
to his first glorious state; and therefore the spirit of prophecy comes
forth from God to awaken hope and faith, expectation and desire in man;
because these are the only powers that can draw him out of the mire of
the earthly life, in which he sticks, and carry him up to his first
heavenly state again.  Nothing therefore is to be sought for in or from
the prophets, but the increase of our hope, faith, and desire of the new
birth of that glorious life which we have lost, and they foretold was to
be had again.

[Way-1-51] Thus, my friend, you see the importance of this one point;
Moses and the prophets have no ground or reason but this, that man has
lost his divine life; and that this same divine life is to be born again
in him.  Now seeing this is the ground and reason of the scriptures,
therefore is it the one unerrring key to the right use of them.  They
have only this one intent, to make man know, resist, and abhor the
working of his fallen earthly nature; and to turn the faith, hope, and
longing desire of his heart to God: and therefore we are only to read
them with this view, and to learn this one lesson from them.  Whatever
therefore occurs, that cannot be turned to this general end, but relates
to only some temporal, occasional, or private matter, is of no more
importance to us, than the cloak and parchments which St.  Paul speaks
of.

[Way-1-52] How many hundred barns must there be, to hold all the learned
volumes, that had never been written, had man looked upon the scriptures
as having no other view or end, but to teach him to renounce the tempers
of his fallen earthly nature, and live unto God in faith and prayer; to
be born again of the divine nature!  But this one end being overlooked
by learned reason, Hebrew and Syriac, Arabic, Greek, and Latin, have
been called in, to torture the scriptures into a chaos of confused
opinions, that has covered the Christian world with darkness, and lost
the only good that was to be had from the written Word of God.  Whereas,
standing upon the ground on which you stand, with only this one great
point at heart, the scriptures are a plain, easy, and certain
instruction; and no honest unlearned heart stands in need of any
commentator to help him to all the benefit that can be had from
scripture, or secure him from any hurtful error.

[Way-1-53] Humanus.  Indeed, Theophilus, my own experience can bear a
full testimony to the truth of all that you have said.  For upon my
reading now the New Testament, with this key in my hand; viz., of man
thus fallen, and thus called to a new birth from heaven; everything I
read in it has spirit and life, and overflows my soul with such an
unction, and sensibility of sweet doctrine, as I am not able to express.
For whilst I consider it only as written to drive all earthly tempers
and passions out of the soul, and inflame the heart with love and desire
of the grace, the spirit, and the light and life of the heavenly nature,
I can say, as the Jewish officers did, never man spoke like Christ and
his apostles.

[Way-1-54] Why was the Son of God made man?  It was because man was to
be made again a divine creature.  Why did man want such a savior?  It
was because he was become earthly, mortal, gross flesh and blood.  Now
take Christ in this light, and consider man in this state, and then all
that is said in the gospel stands in the fullest light.

[Way-1-55] Thus, "Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden,
and I will refresh you."  How poor, how mean, and uncertain a sense is
there in this, till you know, that man has lost his divine nature, and
is fallen into a world that is all labor, burden, and misery!  But as
soon as this is known, then how easy, how plain, is the full and highest
sense of these words, "Come unto me, all that labor, are weary and heavy
laden, and I will refresh you!"  I will bring to life that first happy
state which you have lost.  This is the note, the paraphrase, the
expositor, the key to the true sense of every doctrine of Christ; which,
though variously expressed to awaken the heart, is only one and the same
thing.  Thus, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be
comforted."  But why so?  Because he that is troubled at the corruption,
vanity, and impurity of his fallen earthly state, has the comfort of the
heavenly life ready for him.  Again, "Blessed are they that hunger and
thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled."  How plain and
great is the sense here, as soon as we know, that Christ is our
righteousness; and that the righteous life of Christ in the soul, is
that life which our first father lost!  Therefore, to hunger and thirst
after this righteousness, is the one way to be filled with that divine
life, that we had lost.  Again, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me
and drink.  And out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."
What can the Latin or Greek critic do here?  Nothing at all.  He will
only try to make some excuse for the strangeness of the phrase.  But
when these words are read by one who knows that he, and all mankind,
have lost the divine nature, he tastes and feels the glad tidings which
they bring; and is in love with these sweet sounds, which promise such
an overflowing return of heaven into his soul.  Again, "I beseech you,"
says the apostle, "as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly
lusts, which war against the soul," &c.  The critic looks into his books
to see how Latin and Greek authors have used the words "stranger" and
"pilgrim," and so some sense or other is given to the apostle; but the
Christian, who knows, that man, wandering out of paradise, a colony of
heaven, was taken captive by the stars and elements, to live in labor
and toil, in sickness and pain, in hunger and thirst, in heat and cold
amongst the beasts of the field; where evil spirits, like roaring lions,
seek to devour him; he only knows in what truth and reality man is a
poor stranger and distressed pilgrim upon earth.  Again, "To the poor,"
saith Christ, "the gospel is preached."  The critic only considers the
several kinds of worldly poverty.  But the Christian, who knows that the
real great poverty of man consists in his having lost the riches and
greatness of his first life, knows, that to this poor man the gospel is
preached, because he only, who is sensible of this poverty, can hear and
receive it.  For to man, insensible of his fallen state, the glad
tidings of the gospel are but like news from fairy land; and the cross
of Christ can only be a stumbling-block and foolishness to him, whether
he be a Christian, a Jew, or a Greek.  Thus does it appear, that all the
doctrines and sayings of Christ and his apostles are full of a
comfortable, divine, and exalted sense, or mere empty words, just as the
fall of man from a divine life is either owned or disowned.  But I have
done.

[Way-1-56] Theophilus.  Thus far then, Humanus, we are agreed, that the
fall of man into the life and state of this world, is the whole ground
of his redemption; and that a real birth of Christ in the soul, is the
whole nature of it.  Let me now only ask you, how you would endeavor to
convince a man of his fallen state?

[Way-1-57] Humanus.  I would not begin with the account that Moses gives
of it, for several reasons; but chiefly for these two: first, because
the fall is not an historical matter; nor would a mere historical
knowledge of it be of any use, or do any real good to him.  Secondly,
because Moses's account is not the proof of the fall, and therefore not
to be appealed to as such.

[Way-1-58] Moses is the first historian of natural death, and has
recorded the death of the first man, and of many others who were born of
him: but the proof that man is mortal lies not in Moses's history of the
death of the first man, but in the known nature of man, and the world
from which he has his life.  Again, we do not want Moses to assure us,
that there was a first man; that he had something from heaven, and
something from the earth in him; and must have come into the world in
another manner than all those who have descended from him.  For every
man is himself the infallible proof of this; Moses is only the historian
that has recorded the when, and where, and how this first man came into
the world, and what was his name.  But the proof and certainty of the
fact, that such a first man there must have been, lies not in Moses's
account, but stands proved to every man from his own nature and state in
this world.

[Way-1-59] Thus it is with the fall; we have no more occasion to go to
Moses, to prove that man and the world are in a fallen state, than to
prove that man is a poor, miserable, weak, vain, distressed, corrupt,
depraved, selfish, self-tormenting, perishing creature, and that the
world is a sad mixture of false goods, and real evils; a mere scene of
all sorts of trials, vexations, and miseries; all arising from the
frame, and nature, and condition both of man and the world.  This is the
full infallible proof of the fall of man; which is not a thing learnt
from any history, but shows itself everywhere, and every day, with such
clearness as we see the sun.  Moses is not the prover of the fact, that
man is fallen; but is the recorder of the when and how, and the manner
in which the fall happened.

[Way-1-60] My first attempt therefore, upon any man, to convince him of
the fall, as the ground of the redemption, should be an attempt to do
that for him, which affliction, disappointments, sickness, pain, and the
approach of death, have a natural tendency to do; viz., to convince him
of the vanity, poverty, and misery of his life and condition in this
world.  For as this is the true proof of the fallen state of man, so man
can only be convinced of it, by having this proof truly set before him.
I would therefore appeal at first to nothing but his own nature and
condition in the world; and show him how unreasonable, nay, impossible,
it is, that a God, who has nothing in himself but infinite goodness and
infinite happiness, should bring forth a race of intelligent creatures,
that have neither natural goodness, nor natural happiness.  The inspired
saints of God say thus, "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short
time to live, and is full of misery."  Again, "Man walketh in a vain
shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain."  Now if what is here truly
said of mankind, could be truly said of any order of the beasts and
animals of the field, who could defend the goodness of God in bringing
such creatures into such a state of life?  Now though the Deist rejects
the scriptures, considered as a volume of divine revelation, yet
everything that he outwardly sees, and inwardly feels, demonstrates this
capital truth of scripture, that man is in this poor and miserable state
of life.  And therefore, everything that we know of God, and everything
that we know of man, is a daily irresistible proof, that man is in a
fallen state.  Look at the human infant just come out of the womb, you
can hardly bear the sight; it is a picture of such deformity, nakedness,
weakness, and helpless distress, as is not to be seen amongst the home-
born animals of this world: the chicken has its birth from no sin, and
therefore it comes forth in beauty; it runs and pecks as soon as its
shell is broken: the pig and the calf go both to play, as soon as the
dam is delivered of them; they are pleased with themselves, and please
the eye that beholds their frolic state and beauteous clothing; whilst
the new-born babe of a woman, that is to have an upright form, that is
to view the heavens, and worship the God that made them, lies for months
in gross ignorance, weakness, and impurity; as sad a spectacle when he
first begins to breathe the life of this world, as when in the agonies
of death he breathes his last.

[Way-1-61] What is all this, but the strongest proof, that man is the
only creature that belongs not to this world, but is fallen into it
through sin?  And therefore his birth, in such distress, bears all the
marks of shame and weakness.  Had he been originally of this world, it
is necessary to suppose, that this world had done the highest honor to
its highest creature; and that he had begun his life in greater
perfection than any other animal, and brought with him a more beautiful
clothing than the finest lilies of the field have.  But, to go on: when
the human infant is set upon his legs, and begins to act for himself, he
soon becomes a more pitiable object than when crying in the cradle.  The
strength of his life is a mere strength of wild passions; his reason is
craft, and selfish subtlety; he loves and hates only as flesh and blood
prompt him, jails and gibbets cannot keep him from theft and murder.  If
he is rich, he is tormented with pride and ambition; if poor, with
murmuring and discontent : be he which he will, sooner or later,
disordered passions, disappointed lusts, fruitless labor, pains and
sickness will tear him from this world in such travail as his mother
felt, when she brought forth the sinful animal.

[Way-1-62] Now all this evil and misery are purely the natural and
necessary effect of his birth in the bestial flesh and blood of this
world, and there is nothing in his natural state that can put a stop to
it; he must be evil and miserable so long as he has only the life of
this world in him.  Therefore the absolute certainty of the fall, and
the absolute necessity of a new birth, are truths, independently of
scripture, plain to a demonstration.  Thus, God is in himself infinite
goodness, and infinite happiness; but man, in his present earthly birth
and life, can neither have goodness or happiness, therefore his present
state of life could not be brought forth by a God who is all goodness
and happiness.  Thus every man, that believes in a creator infinitely
perfect, is under a necessity of believing the whole ground of Christian
redemption, namely, that man hath some way or other lost that perfection
of life which he had at first from his creator.

[Way-1-63] But the Christian has yet an additional proof of his matter,
because the scriptures, which with him are infallible, so frequently and
openly bear witness to it.

[Way-1-64] Thus, "Let us make man in our image; according to our own
likeness."  How great, how divine, is this beginning of man?  How can
there be any evil or misery, any vanity or weakness, in a creature so
brought forth?  But now what is become of this man?  For if you look at
man just coming out of the womb, the pitiable object above described,
what can be so absurd, as to call this birth, his creation in the
likeness and after the image of God?  Now what is said of the first man,
is not spoken of one person, but of the human nature; for the first man
was only the first instance of that which mankind were to be.  He had no
perfection peculiar to himself, but that of being the first man; and had
he stood, all that came from him, had come to life as he did, in the
same strength and glory of perfection, and not been born of a bestial
womb, like the wild ass's colt.  Again, set the following text against
Moses's perfection of the first image of God, "Man that is born of a
woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery."

[Way-1-65] Is not this a full proof, that the first created life of man
is quite dead, and that an earthly life of misery is risen up instead of
it?  Again, the apostle saith, "The natural man knoweth not the things
of God; they are foolishness unto him."  Can this natural man, the man
of earthly flesh and blood, that can have no acquaintance with, or
knowledge of God, to whom the "things of God are foolishness"; can this
be the man first created in the image and likeness of God?  What can be
more absurd than such a thought?  Or what excuse can be made for that
learning which cannot see from so plain a scripture, that human nature,
now, is not that human nature, which it was at first created, but is
dead to that first life, which it had in the image and likeness of God,
or the things of God could not possibly be foolishness to it?  But I
will end this matter with these borrowed words, "We were no more created
to be in the sorrows, burdens, and anguish of an earthly life, than the
angels were created to be in the wrath and darkness of hell.  It is as
contrary to the will and goodness of God towards us, that we are out of
paradise, as it is contradictory to the designs and goodness of God
towards the angels, that some of them are out of heaven, prisoners of
darkness.

[Way-1-66] "The grossness, impurity, sickness, pain, and corruption of
our bodies, is brought upon us by ourselves, in the same manner as the
hideous, serpentine, form of the devils are brought upon them.  How
absurd, and even blasphemous would it be, to say with the scripture and
the church, "that we are children of wrath, and born in sin," if we had
that nature, which God at first gave us?  What a reproach upon God, to
say, that this world is a valley of misery, a shadow of death, full of
disorders, snares, evils, and temptations, if this was an original
creation, or that state of things for which God created us?  Is it not
as consistent with the goodness and perfection of God, to speak of the
misery and disorder that unfallen holy angels find above, and of the
vanity, emptiness, and sorrow of their heavenly state, as to speak of
the misery of men, and the sorrows of this world, if men and the world
were in that order, in which God at first had placed them?  If God could
make any place poor and vain, and create any beings into a state of
vanity and vexation of spirit, he might do so in all places, and to all
beings."* {*Serious Answer to Dr.Trapp on the Sin, &c.  of being
Righteous overmuch, p.  35.}

[Way-1-67] Theophilus.  You have put the fall, Humanus, upon its right
proof, and shown great judgment in your intended method of converting
anyone to the belief of it.  You have set the whole matter in so just a
light, that I have nothing that I would add to it.

[Way-1-68] Humanus.  Give me leave, gentlemen, just to put in a word or
two concerning another plain indication, that man has lost that life and
nature, in which he was first created.  Reason has been my god, and is
the vain idol of modern Deism, and modern Christianity; and yet human
ignorance, infirmity, and mortality; they all began together; they are
inseparable; they generate and are generated from one another; they are
the life of each other; and they must live and die together, and all
bear the same witness to the fallen state of man.  For no creature can
come from the hands of God into a state of any ignorance of anything,
that is fit and proper to be known by it.  This is as impossible as for
God to have an envious, or evil will.  Now all right and natural
knowledge, in whatever creature it is, is sensible, intuitive, and its
own evidence.  But opinion, reasoning, or doubting (for they are all but
one thing) can only then begin when the creature has lost its first
right and natural state, and is got somewhere, and become somewhat, that
it cannot tell what to make of.  Then begins doubting, from thence
reasoning, from thence debating; and this is the high birth of our
magnified reason, as nobly born, as groping is, which has its beginning
in and from darkness, or the loss of light.  Hence we have a full proof,
that man has lost his first natural state in which God created him.  For
reasoning, doubt, and perplexity in any creature, is the effect of some
fall, or departure from its first state of nature, and shows, that it
wants, and is seeking, something that its nature would have, but knows
not how to come at it.  The beasts seek not after truth; a plain proof,
that it has no relation to them; has no suitableness to their nature,
nor ever belonged to them.  Man is in quest of it, in perplexity about
it, cannot come at it; takes lies to be truth, and truth to be lies; a
plain proof, both that he has it not, and yet has had it, was created in
it, and for it; for nothing can seek for anything, but that which is
lost, and is wanted; nor could it form the least idea of it, but because
it has belonged to it, and ought to be his.

[Way-1-69] The beasts have no ignorance of anything, that concerns them;
but have all the sensible, intuitive knowledge of everything that is the
good of their nature.  But man left to his reason is all over ignorance,
doubt, conjecture, and perlexity in matters of the highest moment, about
what he himself is, what is his chief good, where he is to seek it, and
how to obtain it.  For to ask your reason, how God is your God, how you
are in him, and from him, what he is in himself, and what he is in you,
is but like asking your hands to feel out the thickness, or the
thinness, of the light.  To ask your reason, whether the soul of man is
immortal in its nature, is to as good purpose, is going no father out of
the way, than if you was to ask your eyes to show you, where extension
begins, and where it ends.  To ask your reason, whether man has anything
of God, or the divine nature in him, is just as suitable to the nature
and power of your reason, as if you was to ask your nose, whether this
or that sweet, aromatic smell in the garden, has any heavenly power
mixed with, and opening itself in it.

[Way-1-70] Reason, therefore, is so far from being able to help man to
that knowledge, which his nature and condition wants, that it can only
help his ignorance to increase and fructify in doubts, fictions, and
absurd debates.  And the thing cannot be otherwise; man must walk in a
vain shadow, so long as reason is his oracle.  For nothing can act
suitably to nature, find its true state in nature, or answer the end of
its creation by the power of reason; because reason is not the life, the
power, or former of nature; and therefore has no more power over nature,
than over the powers and principles of vegetation, either in the body of
man, or any other creature.  He therefore who turns to his reason, as
the true power and light of his nature, betrays the same ignorance of
the whole nature, power, and office of reason, as if he was to try to
smell with his eyes, or see with his nose.  For as each of these senses
has only its one work or power, which it cannot alter, or exceed; so
reason has only its one work or power, which it cannot alter, or exceed;
and that one work is, to be a bare observer and comparer of things that
manifest themselves to it by the senses.  This is as much its one only
power, as seeing is the one only power of the eyes.  When therefore
reason takes upon it to determine on things not manifested to it by the
senses, as to judge about divine new birth, a divine light, and divine
faith; or how the soul wants, or does not want God, &c.  it is then as
much out of its place and office, as the eye that takes upon it to
smell; and its true name and nature is, whim, humor, caprice,
conjecture, opinion, fancy, and every other species of blindness, and
passion.

[Way-1-71] Now suppose man to come thus into the world, with this chief
difference from other creatures; that he is at a loss to find out what
he is, how he is to live, and what he is to seek, as his chief
happiness; what he is to own of a God, of providence, religion, &c.
Suppose him to have faculties that put him upon this search, and no
faculties, that can satisfy his inquiry; and what can you suppose more
miserable to himself, or more unworthy of a good creator?  Therefore, if
you will not suppose a God, that has been good to all creatures, and
given every animal its proper light of nature, except man, you must be
forced to own, that man has certainly lost the true light and perfection
of his nature, which God at first gave him.

[Way-1-72] But I believe Academicus wants to say something, and
therefore I have done.

[Way-1-73] Academicus.  I was only going to say, that every attribute of
God, everything that sense and reason force us to see, and know, and
feel, both of ourselves, and the world, join with the letter and spirit
of all scripture in attesting, that man has certainly had a divine life,
to which he has certainly died.  But yet I must own it is very difficult
to conceive, how a creature brought forth in so high perfection, in such
enjoyment of the life, light, and Spirit of God, could either deceive
himself, or be deceived by another.

[Way-1-74] Theophilus.  All that we want to know, my friend, is the
certainty of the fact, and this is of the greatest moment to us: for
this is it, that takes us from the herd of earthly animals, and lays the
foundation of religion, and divine virtue.  For had not a divine life at
first been in us, we should be now at the same distance from all true
virtue and goodness, and as incapable of forming the least thought or
desire of it, as other animals; and should have nothing to do, but to
look to ourselves, live to our earthly nature, and make the most of this
world.  For this is the only wisdom and goodness, that an earthly nature
is capable of, whether it be a man, or a fox.  The certainty therefore
of the fact, of our first divine birth, is all; nothing more need be
inquired after.  For on this ground stands all our comfort; hence it is,
that, in faith and hope, we can look up to God as our Father, to heaven
as our native country, and have the honor to be accounted only as
strangers and pilgrims upon earth.

[Way-1-75] But however, to remove your difficulty, I shall give you a
little sketch of the possibility of man's falling, although created in
the perfection abovementioned.

[Way-1-76] Now supposing God to have brought a new intelligent creature
into a new world, all the attributes of God oblige us to suppose this
creature to be created in a perfect state both inwardly and outwardly.
As intelligent, it must partake of the divine understanding; as living,
it must have a degree of the divine life in it; as good, it must have a
birth of the divine goodness in it; as an offspring of divine love, it
must have a divine happiness, for the enjoyment of which the love of God
created it.  Now there is but one possible way, for this intelligent
creature, thus endowed, to fall from, or lose the happiness of its first
created state.  It cannot knowingly choose misery, or the loss of its
happiness: therefore it can only fall by such an ignorance, or power of
falling as is consistent with its perfect state.  Now this power lay
wholly in the newness of its life: it only began to find itself an
intelligent being; and yet had a power of looking with the eyes of its
understanding either inwards, or outwards; upwards, or downwards.  It
had a power of acquiescing and rejoicing in that, which it found itself
to be, and adoring that power and goodness which had brought it into the
possession of such a nature: and it had a power of wandering into
conjectures, and reasons about that, which it was not.  Now as a free,
intelligent creature, it could not be without this power of thus turning
its intelligent eye; and yet, as a beginning creature, that had no
experience, this power could not be free from a possibility of
wandering; and therefore its power of wandering was not a defect, but a
necessary part of its first perfect state.  Now in this possibility of
wandering with its intelligent eye, looking where it ought not, and
entering into conjectures about that, which it was not, may be clearly
seen the possibility of its falling from a state of high perfection.

[Way-1-77] This is the one only possible way for a good, intelligent,
new creature to lose its happiness.  And I think it may justly be
affirmed, that the Mosaic account of the fall of man is exactly this
very case; namely, how the eye of his new unexperienced understanding,
beginning to cast a wandering look into that, which he was not, was by
an unsuspected subtlety, or serpent, drawn into a reasoning and
conjecturing about a certain good and evil, which were no part of his
own created state.

[Way-1-78] Which inquiry, being given into, ended in the real knowledge
of this good and evil, the sensibility of which became an immediate
death to his first divine life, destroyed the angelic image in the
likeness of God, and set a gross, earthly, naked, ashamed, frighted,
wretched animal of bestial flesh and blood in its place, the only animal
to which this new knowledge of good and evil could belong.

[Way-1-79] Supposing therefore the fall of man, which is a fact
attested, and proved by everything we know of God, ourselves, and the
world; the Mosaic account of it has every mark of truth, sobriety, and
justness, as being a plain and easy description of the one only way, by
which a creature so endowed could change or lose its first happy state.

[Way-1-80] Academicus.  Truly, Theophilus, you have given a most natural
and full solution of my difficulty, by which, I suppose, you mean as
well to explain the fall of angels, as of men.  But, sir, if that pride,
to which their fall is charged, must have stolen upon them, in that same
unsuspected way, in which the longing after the tree of good and evil
insinuated itself into man; viz., from a wandering look into that, which
they were not, occasioned by the newness of their untried life, in which
they had but just began to be; suffer me then, to ask, why the fallen
angels were not, at first, the immediate objects of divine mercy and
goodness?  Why they are to be forever prisoners of a never-ending hell?
Or, are you of the opinion, that angels, as well as men, will be at last
brought back to their first state?

[Way-1-81] Theophilus.  Your questions, Academicus, seem to have too
much of curiosity in them: but, as I hope you will not give way to this
temper, so I will, for once, comply with your demands.

[Way-1-82] The fall of angels must be supposed to have been as soon
after their creation, as that of Adam.  Had they stood any time in their
new-created state, they had been in one and the same impossibility of
falling, as the angels that are now in heaven.  For no pure,
intelligent, good, and holy created being, can possibly lose this divine
state of perfection, but through the first use of its untried state and
powers.  The manner of Adam's falling into the life of this world
plainly shows the manner how the angels fell into hell, namely, at first
only by looking and conjecturing with their intelligent eye into that,
which they were not, which was not opened in them, but was hid in God.
This looking went on till it became a lust and strong longing after that
somewhat; just as it had done in Adam, who so gazed upon the earthly
good and evil, till it opened itself in him.  Adam looked only at that
which was creaturely, and in a life below him; and therefore only that
lower, creaturely, bestial life was brought forth in him.  But the angel
turning his wandering look into that height and depth which was not
creaturely, but hid in God; namely, into the might and strength of
eternity, that he might know how the creaturely life was kindled by it;
and thinking himself by his exalted nature, to be as near to this great
power, and as capable of entering into it, as Adam thought himself near
to, and capable of knowing the good and evil of the earthly life; and as
Adam thought to be like God in this new knowledge; so the angel imagined
to be like God, could he enter into this knowledge, how the might of God
kindled the creaturely life, for then he himself should have the power
of creating or kindling the creaturely life; and as Adam's imagination
brought forth a lust and longing, which could not be stopped, till the
earthly knowledge, and earthly life, had opened itself in him; so the
angel's imagination begot such a lust and longing to know the ground and
original of life, as would not be stopped till the ground and original
of life, namely, that depth of darkness and fire, in and from which
every creaturely life must begin, was totally opened in him, and he as
much swallowed up by hell, as Adam was by the earthly life.  Thus you
may see, how the same aspiring imagination (but with regard to different
matters) rising in the same manner, and from the same cause, in both
these creatures, and working itself up into a lust and longing, brought
the one from heaven into hell, and the other from paradise into a
bestial world.

[Way-1-83] Now as the lust of Adam, when it had obtained its desire,
opened all the properties and tempers of the bestial life in him; so the
lust of the angel, when it got what it wanted; viz., the ground and
original of the creaturely life, which is darkness and fire; immediately
opened all the dreadful properties of darkness and fire in him, which at
once swallowed up or extinguished the angelic nature.  Hence wrath,
hatred, pride, envy, malice, and every enmity to light and love, are the
one only life of the fallen angel; and he can will and act nothing else,
but as these properties of darkness and fire drive him.

[Way-1-84] To ask therefore, why the fallen angels continue in their
state, is to ask, why darkness is not made to be light?  For the root
and ground of nature is unchangeable; it keeps its own nature, or it
could not be the ground; it must stand always in its own place, and be
only the ground and root; it cannot rise higher than the root, no more
than the root of the tree can be its branches and fruit.  The angels,
therefore, being fallen into the ground and root of nature, have only
the working life of the ground and root of nature in them; and therefore
seem to be as unchangeable, and incapable of having any other, as the
root itself is.

[Way-1-85] To ask therefore, why the fallen angels were not helped by
the mercy and goodness of God, as fallen man was; is like asking, why
the refreshing dew of heaven does not do that to flint, which it does to
the vegetable plant?  For as the nature of the flint is too hard, and
too much compacted, to receive any alteration from the sweet softness of
refreshing water; so the fallen angel, like the flint, being shut up in
the wrathful working of its own hard darkness and fire, the goodness of
God can have no entrance into it.

[Way-1-86] For what are we to understand by the mercy and goodness of
God?  His mercy is his patience.  And his goodness, is his light, and
Word, and Holy Spirit.  Now every creature has the benefit of divine
patience; but no creature can have his goodness, but that which is
capable of receiving his light, and Holy Spirit.

[Way-1-87] And his light, and Holy Spirit, cannot enter into a creature,
as an external, additional thing, that may be given to it, whether it
will, or not, but must be brought forth as a birth in it.  For the
light, and Spirit of God can be nowhere, but as a birth, whether it be
in God, or the creature.  And therefore the goodness of God can be
imparted to no creature, but that which is capable of a birth of the
light and Spirit of God, or, in the words of scripture, unless it be
"born of the Word and Spirit of God."

[Way-1-88] This therefore you may rest upon, as a certain truth, that
the one only reason, why the fallen angels have as yet had nothing of
the Spirit or light of God breathed into, or born in them, is, because
they are as yet utterly incapable of such a birth, or of being helped by
the divine goodness.  For as flame cannot communicate itself to flint,
nor the Spirit of God to a beast; because the flint stands in the utmost
contrariety to flame, and the beast in a total incapacity of holiness;
so the fallen angel is in its working life altogether incapable of
receiving the Spirit and life of God into it.  Were it not thus, angels
had been helped, as early as man: for the goodness, or the light and
Spirit of God loses no time, but stands always in the same fullness of
communication of itself to every creature that is capable of receiving
it.

[Way-1-89] And therefore it is, that fallen man was immediately helped,
because he fell only into earthly flesh and blood, in which the light of
this world is kindled, which light has something of heaven in it, and
was kindled by the light of heaven.

[Way-1-90] And therefore the goodness of God, or his light, and Holy
Spirit, could come to man's assistance in the light of this life, and
therein begin a covenant of redemption with him.  For in this light of
his life, which is a ray of heaven, the inspoken Word in paradise could
enter, and have communion with it, and make itself to be a beginning of
salvation to all those, who by faith and hope should lay hold of it, and
endeavor after a new birth from it.  Thus stands the ground and reason
why men, and not angels, were immediately helped at their fall.

[Way-1-91] As to your last question, whether I believe the final
restoration of all the fallen angels; I shall only say, that neither
ancient nor modern writers, on either side of the question, have touched
the true merits of the cause, or spoke to that point on which the
decision of the matter wholly rests.

[Way-1-92] For it can neither be sufficiently affirmed, nor sufficiently
denied, by any arguments drawn either from the divine attributes, or
texts of scripture; for they cannot come up to the point in question.
But the true ground and merit of the cause lies solely in the
possibility of the thing, which no one has attempted to prove, nor
perhaps is anyone able to do it; namely, to show from a true ground,
that the diabolical nature is possible to be altered.  Darkness can by
no omnipotence be made to be light; it can only be suppressed, or
overcome by it, or forced to be hid under it, as heaven hides or
overcomes hell; but still the darkness has its first nature, never to be
changed.

[Way-1-93] Now if anyone can show, that the devils are not essentially
evil, as darkness is essentially dark, but have only such an accidental
difference from goodness, as ice has from water, or a flint from
transparent glass; then their restoration is possible, and they will
infallibly have all their evil removed out of them by the goodness of
God.

[Way-1-94] But unless it could be shown from a true ground in nature,
that the fallen angels must have something of the heavenly life in them,
though shut up in a thousand times harder death, than fire is in the
dark flint, no length of time, or anything else, can produce any
alteration, or cessation of their evil nature.

[Way-1-95] For time cannot alter the nature or essence of things; it
only suffers that to come to pass which is possible, and consistent with
the nature of things.  No length of time can make a circle to have, or
give forth, the properties of a right line.

[Way-1-96] Now if the fallen angels have nothing heavenly in them, but
stand in as full a contrariety to all that is heavenly, as the circle
does to the properties of the right line; then goodness is as impossible
to be ever awakened in them, as in a beast.  The beast must always be
what it was at first; and for this reason, because nothing but the
bestial nature is in it: if therefore the fallen angel is totally
hellish, as the beast is bestial, it must always be what it is.

[Way-1-97] But we have launched far enough in a deep that does not
belong unto us; and which cannot be sufficiently affirmed or denied but
from the known possibility, or the known impossibility, of the thing,
which does not yet appear.  If it is possible, I am heartily glad of it;
and am also sure enough, that it will then come to pass in its own time.
For if he could not be thought to be a good man, who did not do all that
he could to make sinners become holy and happy in goodness, we may be
sure enough that the boundless goodness of God, will set no bounds to
itself, but remove every misery from every creature that is capable of
it.  But let me now return to Humanus, and ask him, that, supposing he
could not convince a man of the certainty of his fallen state, how he
would farther proceed with him.

[Way-1-98] Humanus.  Truly, Theophilus, I would proceed no farther at
all; and for this good reason, because I should then have nothing to
proceed upon.  Did I certainly know of an infallible remedy for every
disorder of the eyes, only to be had by going to China for it, I should
not attempt to persuade a man, who believed his eyes to be sound and
good, to leave all that he had, and go to China for this infallible
remedy for bad eyes.

[Way-1-99] Now to press a man to deny himself, and leave all that he
hath in the enjoyments of flesh and blood, in order to be reconciled to
God, who believes himself to be in the same good state, in which God
created him, seems to be as wild a project, as to desire him who is well
pleased with the goodness of his sight, to go to the Indies to be helped
to see.

[Way-1-100] And indeed I very well know, from former experience, that
all discourse about the reasonableness of Christianity, the doctrine of
the cross, the exceeding love of God in giving so great a savior, with
many more things of the like nature, were mere empty sounds, heard with
the greatest indifference, and incapable of raising the least
seriousness in me, merely because I had not the least notion or
suspicion of the truth and greatness of my fallen state, and therefore
was not the man who had any fitness to be affected with these matters.
And thence it was that Christ said, "Come unto me, all ye that labor,
and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you"; as plain as if he had
said, No one else can come to me, nor anyone else be refreshed by me.

[Way-1-101] Here therefore, in my humble opinion, should all begin, who
would propagate Christianity, or make true converts to it, and here
stop, as Christ did.  It is only the weary, and heavy laden, that are
fitted to be converts, or refreshed; and therefore we can no way help a
man to be a Christian, or fit him to be refreshed by Christ, but by
bringing him into a full sensibility of the evil, and burden, and vanity
of his natural state, till some good providence awakens him out of it;
and not make proposals to him of the reasonableness of believing the
Holy Trinity, the incarnation of the Son of God, and the necessity of
his sufferings and death, &c.  for this method is full as absurd, as to
enter into solemn debate with a confessed atheist, about the
reasonableness of worshiping God in spirit and truth; for, as the
excellence of a God is the only ground of proving that he ought to be
worshiped in spirit and truth, so the certainty and belief of our fallen
state is the only ground of showing the reasonableness of the mysteries
of redemption.  And he that disowns the fall of man from a divine life,
has all the same reasons for rejecting the mysteries of our salvation,
as the atheist has to reject the doctrines of a spiritual worship of
God.  Therefore, to expose the mysteries of our salvation to the wrangle
of a debate with an unbeliever of the fall of man, which mysteries have
no other ground to stand upon, is not only helping him to an easy
triumph over you, but is the most likely method to prevent his ever
becoming a Christian.  For seeing how easily he can ridicule mysteries,
which, to him in his present state, can have no reasonableness in them,
he is put into the most likely way of living and dying in a hardened
contempt of them.  Whereas if you stick close to the one true ground of
Christianity, and only proceed as that proceeds, and make the unbeliever
no offers of any other Christianity, but that which is to begin with the
acknowledged sensibility of the fall of human nature from its first
divine life; you stop where you ought to stop, and rob him of all power
and pretense of meddling with the other mysteries of salvation.

[Way-1-102] The one business then upon his hands, if he will hold out
against you, must be to deny his reason and senses, and maintain, in
spite of both, that man is not fallen, but is by nature holy, just,
good, and happy both in body and soul; and that mankind, and the world
they are in, have all that goodness and happiness, which they could be
supposed to have from an infinitely good and happy God; and who can will
nothing in the creature but goodness and happiness.  Here you bring the
Deist to his proper work, and all the contradiction to sense and reason
will lie on his side: you set Christianity upon its true ground; and
whoever thus defends it, as it ought to be defended, not only does
justice to the Christian cause, but acts the most kind and friendly part
towards those who oppose it merely through a misunderstanding of its
true ground and nature; which I will venture to say is the case of all
the sober well-meaning Deists.  For Deism has no natural foundation, or
ground of its own, to stand upon; it does not grow from any root or
strength within itself, but is what it is merely from the bad state of
Christendom, and the miserable use that heathenish learning, and worldly
policy, have made of the gospel.  If it (Deism) seems to itself to be
strong and well-grounded, it is merely because it can so easily object
to church-doctrines, and scholastic opinions: if it seems to itself to
be good it is because it can so easily lay open the evils which
Christians and churches bring upon one another: if it seems to itself to
be highly rational, its reason is, because it is free from that number
of absurdities and contradictions which Christian churches lay to the
charge of one another.  Lastly, if it keeps off all fearful forebodings
of the consequences of not receiving the gospel, it is because it so
plainly sees, that Christians say, "Hail, master," kiss the gospel, and
then break every part of it.

[Way-1-103] This is the true height, and depth, and total strength of
Deism or infidelity; it never had any other support in myself but this;
nor did I ever converse with a Deist, who carried the matter higher or
farther than this, to support the cause.  Hence it is, that you made so
speedy a convert of me, by showing me such a Christianity as I never
heard of before; and stripped of everything that gave me power to oppose
it.  Had you proceeded in the way practiced by most defenders of the
gospel, you had left me just as you found me, if not more confirmed in
my old way.  But as you have justly removed all controversy about
doctrines from the merits of the cause, and shown that it all lies in
this one short, plain, and decisive point, namely the fall of man; a
fall proved and demonstrated to all my senses and reason, by every
height and depth of nature, by every kind of misery, evil, and sin in
the world, by everything we know of God, ourselves, and the world we
live in; the ground and foundation of Christianity is undeniable, and no
one can be too speedy a convert to the belief of it.  And as you have
also shown, that the whole nature of the gospel redemption means nothing
but the one, true, and only possible way of delivering man from his
miserable state in this world; Christianity is shown to be the most
intelligible and desirable thing that the heart of man can think of.
And thus, contrary to all expectation, the tables are quite turned;
Deism can no longer be founded on argument, and Christianity is as self-
evident as our senses: all learning on both sides, either for or against
it, is insignificant; Christianity stands upon a bottom quite superior
to it, and may be the sure possession of every plain man, who has sense
enough to know whether he is happy or unhappy, good or evil.  For this
natural knowledge, if adhered to, is every man's sure guide to that one
salvation preached by the gospel.  Which gospel stands in no more need
of learning and critical art now, than it did when Christ was preaching
it upon earth.  How absurd would it have been for any critics in Greek
and Hebrew, to have followed Christ and his apostles, as necessary
explainers of their hard words, which called for nothing in the hearers
but penitent hearts turned to God; and declared, that they only "who
were of God, could hear the Word of God!"  How strange, that Christ
should choose only illiterate men to preach the gospel of the kingdom of
God, if only great scholars could rightly understand what they said!
Again, supposing learned men to have only the true fitness to understand
the word of scripture, and that the plain man is to receive it from
them, how must he know which are the scholars that have the right
knowledge?  From whence is he to have this information?  For no one need
be told, that ever since learning has borne rule in the church, learned
doctors have contradicted and condemned one another in every essential
point of the Christian doctrine.  Thousands of learned men tell the
illiterate, they are lost in this or that church; and thousands of
learned men tell them, they are lost, if they leave it.

[Way-1-104] If therefore Christianity is in the hands of scholars, how
must the plain man come at it?  Must he, though unable to understand
scripture, for want of learning, tell which learned man is in the right,
and which is not?  If so, the unlearned man has much the greatest
ability, since he is to do that for scholars, which they cannot do for
themselves.

[Way-1-105] But the truth of the matter is this; Christian redemption is
God's mercy to all mankind; but it could not be so, if every fallen man,
as such, had not some fitness and capacity to lay hold of it.  It must
have no dependence upon times and places, or the ages and several
conditions of the world, or any outward circumstance of life; as the
first man partook of it, so must the last; the learned linguist, and the
blind, the deaf and dumb, have but one and the same common way of
finding life in it.  And he that writes large commentaries upon the
whole Bible, must be saved by something full as different from book
knowledge, as they were, who lived when there was neither book nor any
alphabet in the world.

[Way-1-106] For this salvation, which is God's mercy to the fallen soul
of man, merely as fallen, must be something that meets every man; and
which every man, as fallen, has something that directs him to turn to
it.  For as the fall of man is the reason of this mercy, so the fall
must be the guide to it; the want must show the thing that is wanted.
And therefore the manifestation of this one salvation, or mercy to man,
must have a nature suitable, not to this or that great reader of
history, or able critic in Hebrew roots and Greek phrases, but suitable
to the common state and condition of every son of Adam.  It must be
something as grounded in human nature, as the fall itself is, which
wants no art to make it known; but to which the common nature of man is
the only guide in one man, as well as another.  Now this something,
which is thus obvious to every man, and which opens the way to Christian
redemption in every soul, is a sense of the vanity and misery of this
world; and a prayer of faith and hope to God, to be raised to a better
state.

[Way-1-107] Now in this sensibility, which every man's own nature leads
him into, lies the whole of man's salvation; here the mercy of God and
the misery of man are met together; here the fall and the redemption
kiss each other.  This is the Christianity which is as old as the fall;
which alone saved the first man, and can alone save the last.  This is
it on which hang all the law and the prophets, and which fulfills them
both; for they have only this end, to turn man from the lusts of this
life, to a desire, and faith, and hope of a better.  Thus does the whole
of Christian redemption, considered on the part of man, stand in this
degree of nearness and plainness to all mankind; it is as simple and
plain as the feeling our own evil and misery, and as natural as the
desire of being saved and delivered from it.

[Way-1-108] This is the Christianity which every man must first be made
sensible of, not from hearsay, but as a growth or degree of life within
himself, before he can have any fitness, or the least pretense to judge
or speak a word about the further mysteries of the gospel.  But here I
stop.

[Way-1-109] Theophilus.  Well, Humanus, I have now pushed the matter
with you, as far as I intended; and you have given me full proof of the
truth and solidity of your own conversion, and your ability to do good
amongst your old brethren.  You must now enter the lists with them; not
to charge them with ignorance, ill will, or profaneness of spirit, but
only to try, in the spirit of love and meekness, to undeceive them, in
the manner you have been undeceived; and to show them, that Christianity
is by no means that thing, which you and they have so long disliked.

[Way-1-110] Nothing can be more right than your resolution not to enter
into debate about the gospel doctrines, or propose the reasonableness of
them to anyone, till he owns himself sensibly convinced of the
forementioned fall of man; and stands in a full desire to be saved, or
delivered from it.  And if that time never comes, you must leave him, as
in the same incapacity to hear or judge of the doctrines of the Holy
Trinity, in the incarnation of the Son of God, the operation of the Holy
Spirit, as Epicurus would be.  For every man that cleaves to this world,
that is in love with it, and its earthly enjoyments, is a disciple of
Epicurus, and sticks in the same mire of atheism, as he did, whether he
be a modern Deist, a Popish or Protestant Christian, an Arian, or an
orthodox teacher.  For all these distinctions are without any
difference, if this world has the possession and government of his
heart.  For the whole of the matter lies solely in this, whether heaven,
or earth, hath the heart and government of man.  Nothing divides the
worshipers of the true God from idolaters but this: where earth
possesses and rules the heart, there all are of one and the same
religion, and worship one and the same god, however they may be
distinguished by sect or party.

[Way-1-111] And wherever the heart is weary of the evil and vanity of
the earthly life, and looking up to God for an heavenly nature, there
all are one of the true religion, and worshipers of the true God,
however distant they may be from one another, as to time or place.  But
enough has been said of this matter.

[Way-1-112] Let me now only, before we break up, observe to you the true
ground and nature of gospel Christianity: I call it so by way of
distinction from that original universal Christianity, which began with
Adam; was the religion of the patriarchs, of Moses and the prophets, and
of every penitent man in every part of the world, that had faith and
hope towards God, to be delivered from the evil of this world.

[Way-1-113] But when the Son of God had taken a birth in and from the
human nature, had finished all the wonders that belonged to our
redemption, and was sat down at the right hand of God in heaven, then a
heavenly kingdom was set up on earth, and the Holy Spirit came down from
heaven, or was given to the flock of Christ in such a degree of birth
and life, as never was, nor could be given to the human nature, till
Christ, the redeemer of the human nature, was glorified.  But when the
humanity of Christ, our second Adam, was glorified, and became all
heavenly, then the heavenly life, the comfort, and power, and presence
of the Holy Spirit, was the gift which he gave to his brethren, his
friends and followers, which he had left upon earth.

[Way-1-114] The Holy Ghost descended in the shape of cloven tongues of
fire on the heads of those, that were to begin and open the new powers
of a divine life set up amongst men.  This was the beginning and
manifestation of the whole nature and power of gospel Christianity, a
thing as different from what was Christianity before, as the possession
of the thing hoped for is different from hope, or deliverance different
from the desire or expectation of it.  Hence the apostles were new men,
entered into a new kingdom come down from heaven, enlightened with new
light, inflamed with new love, and preached not any absent or distant
thing, but Jesus Christ, as the wisdom and power of God, felt and found
within them, and as a power of God ready to be communicated in the same
manner, as a new birth from above, to all that would repent and believe
in him.  It was to this change of nature, of life, and spirit, to this
certain immediate deliverance from the power of sin, to be possessed and
governed by gifts and graces of an heavenly life, that men were then
called to, as true Christianity.  And the preachers of it bore witness,
not to a thing that they had heard, but to a power of salvation, a
renewal of nature, a birth of heaven, a sanctification of spirit, which
they themselves had received.  Gospel Christianity then stood upon its
own true ground; it appeared to be what it was.  And what was it?  Why,
it was an awakened divine life set up amongst men; itself was its own
proof; it appealed to its proper judge, to the heart and conscience of
man, which was alone capable of being touched with these offers of a new
life.

[Way-1-115] Hence it was, that sinners of all sorts, that felt the
burden of their evil natures, were in a state of fitness to receive
these glad tidings.  Whilst the rigid Pharisee, the orthodox priest, and
the rational heathen, though at enmity with one another, and each proud
of his own distinction, yet all agreed in rejecting and abhorring a
spiritual savior, that was to save them from their carnal selves, and
the vanity of their own rational selfish virtues.  But when, after a
while, Christianity had lost its first glory, appeared no longer as a
divine life awakened amongst men, and itself was no longer its own proof
of the power and Spirit of God manifested in it; then heathenish
learning, and temporal power, was from age to age forced to be called
the glory and prosperity of the church of Christ; although in the
Revelation of St.  John, its figure is that of a scarlet whore riding
upon the beast.

[Way-1-116] Here therefore, my friend, you are to place the true
distinction of gospel Christianity from all that went before it, or that
is come up after it.  It is purely and solely a divine life awakened,
and set up amongst men, as the effect and fruit of Christ's
glorification in heaven; and has no other promise from him but that of
his Holy Spirit, to be with it, as its light, its guide, its strength,
its comfort, and protection, to the end of the world.  Therefore as
gospel Christians, we belong to the new covenant of the Holy Spirit,
which is the kingdom of God come down from heaven on the day of
Pentecost; and therefore it is, that there is no possibility of seeing
or entering into this new kingdom, but by being born again of the
Spirit.  The apostles and disciples of Christ, though they had been
baptized with water, had followed Christ, heard his doctrines, and done
wonders in his name; yet as then, stood only near to the kingdom of God,
and preached it to be at hand.  They had only seen and known Christ
according to the flesh; had followed him with great zeal, but with
little and very low knowledge either of him or his kingdom; and
therefore it was, that they were commanded to stand still, and not act
as his ministers in his new glorified state, till they were endued with
power from on high: which power they then received, when the Holy Ghost
with his cloven tongues of fire came down upon them, by which they
became illuminated instruments, that were to diffuse the light of an
heavenly kingdom over all the world.  From that day began gospel
Christianity, with its true distinction from everything that was before
it; which was the ministration of the Spirit; and the ministers of it
called the world to nothing but gifts and graces of the same Spirit, to
look for nothing but spiritual blessings, to trust, and hope, and pray
for nothing but the power of that Spirit, which was to be the one life
and ruling Spirit of this newly opened kingdom of God.  No one could
join himself to them or have any part with them but by dying to the
wisdom and light of the flesh, that he might live by the Spirit, through
faith in Jesus Christ, who had thus called him to his kingdom and glory.
Now this Christianity is its own proof; it can be proved from nothing
but itself; it wants neither miracles, nor outward witness; but, like
the sun, is only its own discoverer.

[Way-1-117] He that adheres only to the history of the facts, doctrines,
and institutions of the gospel, without being born of its Spirit, is
only such a Christian, and is no nearer to Christ, than the Jew, who
carnally adhered to the letter of the law.  They both stand in the same
distance from gospel Christianity.

[Way-1-118] It is in vain therefore for the modern Christian, to appeal
to antiquity, to history, and ancient churches, to prove that he belongs
to Christ; for he can only belong to him, by having the power of Christ,
and the Spirit of God living and dwelling in his renewed inward man.

[Way-1-119] But a learned Christianity, supported and governed by
reason, dispute, and criticism, that is forced to appeal to canons, and
councils,and ancient usages, to defend itself, has lost its place,
stands upon a fictitious ground, and shows, that it cannot appeal to
itself, to its own works, which alone are the certain and only proofs
either of a true, or a false Christianity.

[Way-1-120] For the truth of Christianity is the Spirit of God living
and working in it; and where this Spirit is not the life of it, there
the outward form is but like the outward carcase of a departed soul.

[Way-1-121] For the spiritual life is as much its own proof, as the
natural life, and needs no outward, or foreign thing to bear witness to
it.  But if you please, gentlemen, we will end for this time, and refer
what remains to the afternoon.

The End of the First Dialogue

The Way to Divine Knowledge--continued

The Second Dialogue

[Way-2-1] Academicus.  I must take the liberty, gentlemen, of speaking
first this afternoon; for though I have been much pleased with what
passed betwixt Humanus and Theophilus in the morning, yet I must own to
you all, that I was quite disappointed; for I came in full expectation
of hearing everything, that I wish, and want to know, concerning Jacob
Behmen, and his works.  For though I have been reading, for more than
two years, some one or other of his books, with the utmost attention,
and I everywhere find the greatest truths of the gospel most
fundamentally asserted, yet presently I am led into such depths, as I
know not where I am, and talked to in such new, intricate, and
unintelligible language, as seems quite impossible to be comprehended.
Sometimes I almost suspect, that the author understood not himself: for
I think, if I knew any truths, though ever so deep or uncommon; yet, if
I understand them plainly myself, I could set them before others in the
same plainness, that they appeared to me.

[Way-2-2] All my acquaintance have the same complaint that I here make;
but some hope, and others say, that if you live to publish any of his
books, you will remove most of his strange and unintelligible words; and
give us notes and explications of such as you don't alter.  Surely a
kind of commentary upon him, would reconcile many to the reading of him,
who, in the state he is in, cannot have patience to puzzle their heads
about him.

[Way-2-3] Rusticus.  Oh this impatient scholar!  How many troubles do I
escape, through the want of his learning?  How much better does my old
neighbor John the shepherd proceed?  In winter evenings, when he comes
out of the field, his own eyes being bad, the old woman his wife puts on
her spectacles, and reads about an hour to him, sometimes out of the
scriptures, and sometimes out of Jacob Behmen; for he has had two or
three of his books some years.  I sat by one evening, when my old dame,
reading Jacob, had much ado to get on: "John," said I, "do you
understand all this?"  "Ah," says he, "God bless the heart of the dear
man, I sometimes understand but little of him; and mayhap Betty does not
always read right; but that little which I often do understand, does me
so much good, that I love him where I don't understand him."

[Way-2-4] "John," said I, "shall I bring a man to you, that knows the
meaning of all of Jacob's hard words, and can make all his high matters
as plain to you, as the plainest things in the world?"  "No, no,"
replied John, "I don't want such a man, to make a talking about Jacob's
words; I had rather have but a little of his own, as it comes from him,
than twenty times as much at second-hand.  Madam, the squire's wife, of
our town, hearing how Betty and I loved the scriptures, brought us, one
day, a huge expounding book upon the New Testament; and told us, that we
should understand the scripture a deal better, by reading it in that
book, than the Testament alone.  The next Lord's Day, when two or three
neighbors, according to custom, came to sit with us in the evening;
'Betty,' said I,'bring out madam's great book, and read the fifth
chapter of St.  Matthew.'  When she had done that, I bid her read the
fifteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians.  The next
morning, said I to Betty, 'Carry his expounding book again to my
mistress, and tell her, that the words of Christ, and his apostles, are
best by themselves, and just as they left them.'

[Way-2-5] "And, as I was that morning going to my sheep, thought I to
myself, this great expounding book seems to have done just as much good
to this little book of the Testament, by being added to it, and mixed
with it, as a gallon of water would do to a little cup of true wine, by
being added to it, or mixed with it.  The wine indeed would be all
there; but its fine taste, and cordial spirit, which it had, when drank
by itself, would be all lost and drowned in the coldness and deadness of
the water.

[Way-2-6] "When my Betty used to read this, or some such words of
Christ, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven'; she used to stop a little, that my heart might have time to be
affected with them, to love the blessed thing there spoken of, and lift
up itself to God in desire of it.  But this great book takes this good
work from my heart; and only calls upon my mind, to behold the many
parts which the text may be split into, and the many meanings, some
better and some worse, some higher and some lower, that every part has,
and may be taken in, by some doctor of some church or other.  Therefore,
Rusticus, I sent the great book to madam again; and am, for the same
reason, utterly against hearing your expounder of Jacob Behmen.  If
Jacob has more truths than other folks, he is the best able to tell me
what they are; and if he has some matters too high for me, I don't
desire any lesser man to make them lower.

[Way-2-7] "When he, like an Elijah, in his fiery chariot, is caught up
into such heights, and sees and relates such things, as I cannot yet
comprehend; I love and reverence him for having been where I never was;
and seeing such things as he cannot make me to see: just as I love and
reverence St.  Paul for having been caught up into the third heaven, and
hearing and seeing things not possible to be uttered in human words.

[Way-2-8] "As I have but one end in hearing the scriptures read to me,
to fill me with the love of God, and every kind of goodness; so every
part of scripture, whether plain or mysterious, does me the same good,
is alike good to me, and kindles the same heavenly flame in my soul.
Thus these plain words, 'Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart;
and ye shall find rest unto your souls'; give me, without any expounder
of their meaning, such an aversion and dislike of all vanity and pride,
fill me with such sweet contentment in every lowliness of life, that I
long to be the servant of every human creature.  On the other hand,
these lofty words of scripture, 'Behold, a throne was set in heaven; and
he that sat thereon, was, to look upon, like a jasper-stone; and there
was a rainbow round about the throne; and four-and-twenty seats; and
upon the seats, four-and-twenty elders in white raiment, and crowns of
gold upon their heads: and out of the throne proceeded lightnings, and
thunders, and voices: and before the throne were seven lamps of fire,
which are the seven spirits of God: and before the throne there was a
sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and
round about it, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind: and the
first beast was like a lion, the second like a calf, the third had a
face as a man, and the fourth was like a flying eagle: and the four
beasts had each of them six wings, and were full of eyes; and they rest
not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy Lord God almighty, which
was, and is, and is to come.  And when these beasts give glory, and
honor, and thanks, to him that sat on the throne, the four-and-twenty
elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and cast their
crowns before the throne, saying, Thou are worthy, O Lord, to receive
glory and honor, for thou hast created all things,' &c.* {*Revelations,
iv.  ver.  2 &c.}

[Way-2-9] "Now these lofty and mysterious words, instead of puzzling my
head, lay hold of my heart, which, all inflamed with them, rises up with
the eyes and wings of the beasts in their song of praise and honor; and
bows down with the elders that worship the high and mighty Lord of
heaven and earth.  And thus I want no Hebrew or Greek scholar to tell me
this or that, what are the seven spirits of God, why four kinds of
beasts, why neither more nor less than six wings, who were the elders,
and why twenty-four; but the whole matter, as if a glance of the majesty
of heaven had just passed by me, strikes my heart with such good
transports of wonder and joy, as makes me all longing and desire to be
one of those, who are always singing the praises and wonders of the
majesty of God.  And thus, Rusticus, all that the scriptures give me to
drink, whether high or low, is equally a cup of blessing to me, and
equally helps forward the growth of heaven in my soul.

[Way-2-10] "Bring not therefore your cunning man, that has skill in
words, to me; for words are but words; and though they be spoken even by
the messengers of God, as angels, or prophets, or apostles; when they do
their best, they can only do, as John the Baptist did, bear witness to
the light: but the light itself, which can only give light to the soul,
is God himself.  And therefore not he that can best speak with the
tongues of men and angels, but he that most loves God, that is, that
most loves the goodness of the divine nature; he has most of God, and
the light of God within him."

[Way-2-11] Thus ended honest old John the shepherd.  And now,
Academicus, if your learned curiosity could be as much affected with
what he has said, as my ignorant simplicity is, you would drop all that
you had said, as the effect of such impatience as is much fitter to
bring darkness than light into your soul.  You own, that, in the works
of Behmen, the greatest points of Christianity are most fundamentally
opened.  And how can you be more self-condemned, than by desiring more?

[Way-2-12] But the truth is, you have only heard these fundamental
matters; you have only received them as good notions; are content with
the hearsay of them; and are therefore impatient to have more of this
hearsay knowledge, that you may become more learned in high matters, and
more able to talk about the ground and depth of Christian doctrines.
You know, as well as I can tell you, that this is your joy in Jacob
Behmen; and thence it is, that you have no patience, when you can't come
at his meaning, so as to add it to your number of notions.  And thus you
forget how often he tells you, and how fundamentally he proves to you,
that this notional knowledge, the treasure of human reason, is the very
builder of Babel.  Whilst you are under the guidance of our own
Babylonian reason, you can have no good either from the scriptures, or
the writings of Jacob Behmen; but will be hunting after notes and
commentaries to help you to notions which only delude your mind with the
empty shadows of knowledge.  Would you know the truths of Jacob Behmen,
you must see that you stand where he stood; you must begin where he
began, and seek only, as he tells you he did, the heart of God, that he
might be saved from the wrath of sin and Satan; and then it was, that
the light of God broke in upon him.  But you, full of the power of your
own reason, want to stand upon the top of his ladder, without the
trouble of beginning at the bottom, and going up step by step.  But I
believe you had rather have Theophilus speak than me; and therefore I
shall now leave you to him.

[Way-2-13] Theophilus.  Truly, Academicus, I am much of the same mind
with honest Rusticus, though perhaps I might not have spoken it so
bluntly as he has done.  You seem to be in the same error, that most of
my learned friends are in, with regard to Jacob Behmen, who, though they
greatly admire him, yet, of all people, receive the least true benefit
from him.  They have been trained up in dispute and controversy,
accustomed to determine everything by the light of their own reason, and
know no other guide to truth.  And therefore, till, sooner or later,
they come to know the falseness of this guide, they can have no entrance
into the region of divine light; but must be forced to take their part,
not of truth, but of some such system of opinions, as their birth and
education has placed them in.  Thus, a learned Papist has one creed, and
the learned Protestant has another; not because truth and light has
helped him to it; but because birth and education have given to the one
popish, to the other Protestant eyes.  For reason, which is the eye or
light of both, finds as much to its purpose, and as many good tools to
work with, in popish, as in Protestant opinions.  Learning and criticism
are an open field to both, and he only has the greatest harvest, who is
best skilled in reaping.

[Way-2-14] Academicus.  I perceive then, that I must renounce all my
learning and reason, if I am to understand Jacob Behmen.  I cannot say,
that I am resolved to purchase it at so great a price.  I hope the
knowledge to be had from the scriptures, will be sufficient for me,
without his deep matters.  I did not expect to find you so great an
enemy to learning.

[Way-2-15] Theophilus.  Dear Academicus, be not so uneasy; I am no more
an enemy to learning, than I am to that art which builds mills to grind
our corn, and houses for ourselves to dwell in.  I esteem the liberal
arts and sciences as the noblest of human things; I desire no man to
dislike or renounce his skill in ancient or modern languages; his
knowledge of medals, pictures, paintings, history, geography, or
chronology; I have no more dislike of these things in themselves, than
of the art of throwing silk, or making lace.  But then all these things
are to stand in their proper places, and everyone kept within its own
sphere.

[Way-2-16] Now all this circle of science and arts, whether liberal or
mechanic, belongs solely to the natural man; they are the work of his
natural powers and faculties; and the most wicked, sensual, unjust
person, who regards neither God, nor man, may yet be one of the ablest
proficients in any or all of them.  But now Christian redemption is
quite of another nature; it has no affinity to any of these arts or
sciences; it belongs not to the outward natural man, but is purely for
the sake of an inward, heavenly nature, that was lost, or put to death,
in paradise, and buried under the flesh and blood of the earthly,
natural man.  It breathes a spark of life into this inward, hidden, or
lost man; by which it feels and finds itself, and rises up in new
awakened desires after its lost Father, and native country.

[Way-2-17] This is Christian redemption; on the one side, it is the
heavenly divine life offering itself again to the inward man, that had
lost it.  On the other side, it is the hope, the faith, and desire of
this inward man, hungering, and thirsting, stretching after, and calling
upon this divine and heavenly life.

[Way-2-18] Now, whether this awakened, new man breathes forth his faith
and hope towards this divine life, in Hebrew, Greek, or English sounds,
or in no one of them, can be of no significancy: a man that can do it
only in one, or in all these languages, is neither farther from, nor
nearer to, this redeeming life of God.  Or can you think, that the
heavenly life must more willingly enter into, and open itself in, a man
that has many languages, than in him, who knows only one?  Or, that a
man, who can make high Dutch, Welsh, or Greek grammars, must have a
stronger faith, a more lively hope, and a more continual thirst after
God, than he who can but poorly spell in his mother tongue?  But now, if
this is too absurd to be supposed; then, my friend, without the least
injury done, or the least enmity shown, to learning, science, reason,
and criticism, you must place them just where I have done, amongst the
things and ornaments of this earthly life, and such things as, in their
own nature, are as easy to be had, and as highly enjoyed, by men that
despise all goodness, as by those who fear God, and eschew evil.

[Way-2-19] And therefore, sir, no truths concerning the divine and
heavenly life are to be brought for trial before this learned bar, where
both jury and judges are born and bred, live and move and have their
being, in another world, which have no more power of feeling the divine
life, than an eagle's eyes can look into the kingdom of God.  If you, my
friend, having read many old Greek and Latin books, should intend to
publish Homer, or Caesar's Commentaries, with critical notes, I should
have nothing to object to your ability; you might be as well qualified
by such means for such a work, as one man is to make baskets, or another
traps to catch flies.  But if, because of this skill in old Greek and
Latin, you should seem to yourself, or others, to be well qualified to
write notes upon the spirit and meaning of the words of Christ, I should
tell you, that your undertaking was quite unnatural, and as impossible
to be free from error, as when a blind man undertakes to set forth the
beauty of different colors.

[Way-2-20] For the doctrines of redemption belong no more to the natural
man, than the beauty of colors to him, that never saw the light.  And
from this unnatural procedure it is, that the scriptures are as useful
to the Socinian or Arian, the papist or the Protestant; and they can as
easily, by the light of reason, charge one another with absurdities, and
confute each other's opinion, as two blind men can quarrel and reject
each other's notions of red and green.

[Way-2-21] Jesus Christ is the light of that heavenly man that died in
paradise; and therefore nothing in man, but that awakened seed of life,
that died in paradise, can have the least sensibility or capacity for
receiving the redeeming power of Jesus Christ.  But light and life have
no dependence upon words or phrases; they both can only proceed from a
birth, whether it be the light and life of God, or the light and life of
this world.  How absurd would it be, to suppose, that a man, naturally
blind, must be taught grammar or logic, to fit him for the reception of
the light of the sun, and the knowledge of colors?  Yet not less absurd,
than to think, that skill in Hebrew and Greek words can open the light
of God and heaven in the soul.  If you now, Academicus, can set this
matter in a juster light, I am ready to hear you.

[Way-2-22] Academicus.  Standing upon the ground, that you, Theophilus,
stand upon, all that you have said of reason, science, historical
knowledge, or critical skill in words, is unanswerable.  For what can
all these things avail, if redemption is purely a birth of the divine
nature, light, and Spirit of God, offered to fallen man; which birth can
only be received by the faith, hope, and desire of that inward man,
which is divine in us?  For nothing else can have any hunger or thirst
after the divine nature, but that which is itself born of it.

[Way-2-23] Now this true ground of the Christian redemption gives the
greatest glory to God and comfort to man.  It explains the fact, why
plain and simple souls, having their inward man kindled into love, hope,
and faith in God, are capable of the highest divine illumination; whilst
learned students, full of art and science, can live and die without the
least true knowledge of God and Christ, and slaves to all the lusts of
the flesh.  For thus, this redemption belongs only to one sort of
people, and yet is common to all.  It is equally near, and equally open,
to every son of man.  There is no difference between learned and
unlearned, between Jew or Greek, male or female, Scythian or barbarian,
bond or free; but the same Lord is God over all, and equally nigh to all
that call upon him.  It is told us, as the glory of the divine goodness,
that "it giveth fodder to the cattle; and feedeth the young ravens that
cry unto it."  What cattle?  Surely not only to the cattle of Jacob; or
only to the young ravens that cry in the land of Judah.  Yet this would
be much more consistent with the goodness of the one universal God, than
to hold, that only the sons of Jacob, or the children of the
circumcision, were in the covenant of God's redemption.

[Way-2-24] But now, though this one ground of Christian redemption
stands in the highest degree of plainness from scripture, and is
absolutely certain from the very nature of the thing; yet, till I met
with honest Rusticus, I never conversed with any man, or read any book,
that gave me the least hint of it.  When I had taken my degrees, I
consulted several great divines, to put me in a method of studying
divinity.  Had I said to them, "Sirs what must I do to be saved?"  they
would have prescribed hellebore to me, or directed me to the physician
as a vapored enthusiast.  And yet I am now fully satisfied, that this
one question ought to be the sole enquiry of him, who desires to be a
true divine.  And was our savior himself on earth, who surely could do
more for me, than all the libraries in the world; yet I need have asked
no more divinity-knowledge of him, than is contained in the one
question.

[Way-2-25] It would take up near half a day, to tell you the work which
my learned friends have cut out for me.  One told me, that Hebrew words
are all; that they must be read without points; and then the Old
Testament is an opened book.  He recommended to me a cart load of
lexicons, critics, and commentators, upon the Hebrew Bible.  Another
tells me, the Greek Bible is the best; that it corrects the Hebrew in
many places; and refers me to a large number of books learnedly writ in
defense of it.  Another tells me, that church history is the main
matter; that I must begin with the first fathers, and follow them
through every age of the church, not forgetting to take the lives of the
Roman emperors along with me, as striking great light into the state of
the church in their times.  Then I must have recourse to all the
councils held, and the canons made, in every age which would enable me
to see with my own eyes the great corruptions of the Council of Trent.
Another, who is not very fond of ancient matters, but wholly bent upon
rational Christianity, tells me, I need go no higher than the
reformation; that Calvin and Cranmer were very great men; that
Chillingworth and Locke ought always to lie upon my table; that I must
get an entire set of those learned volumes wrote against popery in King
James's reign; and also be well versed in all the discourses which Mr.
Boyle's and Lady Moyer's lectures have produced: and then, says he, you
will be a match for our greatest enemies, which are the popish priests,
and modern Deists.  My tutor is very liturgical; he desires me, of all
things to get all the collections that I can of the ancient liturgies,
and all the authors that treat of such matters; who, he says, are very
learned, and very numerous.  He has been many years making observations
upon them, and is now clear, as to the time, when certain little
particles got entrance into the liturgies, and others were by degrees
dropped.  He has a friend abroad, in search of ancient manuscript
liturgies; for, by the bye, said he, at parting, I have some suspicion
that our sacrament of the Lord's Supper is essentially defective, for
want of having a little water in the wine, &c.  Another learned friend
tells me, the Clementine Constitutions is the book of books; and that
all that lies loose and scattered in the New Testament, stands there in
its true order and form; and though he won't say, that Dr.  Clarke and
Mr.  Whiston are in the right; yet it might be useful to me to read all
the Arian and Socinian writers, provided I stood upon my guard, and did
it with caution.  The last person I consulted, advised me to get all the
histories of the rise and progress of heresies, and of the lives and
characters of heretics.  These histories, he said, contract the matter;
bring truth and error close in view; and I should find all that
collected in a few pages, which would have cost me some years to have
got together.  He also desired me to be well versed in all the
casuistical writers, and chief schoolmen; for they debate matters to the
bottom; dissect every virtue, and every vice, into its many degrees and
parts; and show, how near they can come to one another without touching.
And this knowledge, he said, might be useful to me, when I came to be a
parish priest.

[Way-2-26] Following the advice of all these counselors, as well as I
could, I lighted my candle early in the morning, and put it out late at
night.  In this labor I had been sweating for some years, till Rusticus,
at my first acquaintance with him, seeing my way of life, said to me,
"Had you lived about seventeen hundred years ago, you had stood just in
the same place as I stand now.  I cannot read; and therefore," says he,
"all these hundreds of thousands of disputing books, and doctrine books,
which these seventeen hundred years have produced, stand not in my way;
they are the same thing to me, as if they had never been.  And had you
lived at the time mentioned, you had just escaped them all, as I do now;
because, though you are a very good reader, there was then none of them
to be read.

[Way-2-27] "Could you therefore, be content to be one of the primitive
Christians, who were as good as any that have been since; you may spare
all this labor.  Take only the gospel into your hands; deny yourself;
renounce the lusts of the flesh; set your affections on things above;
call upon God for his Holy Spirit; walk by faith, and not by sight;
adore the holy Deity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in whose image and
likeness you was at first created; and in whose name and power you have
been baptized, to be again the living likeness, and holy habitation, of
his life, and light, and Holy Spirit.

[Way-2-28] "Look up to Christ, as your redeemer, your regenerator, your
second Adam; look at him, as truly he is, the wisdom and power of God,
sitting at his right hand in heaven, giving forth gifts unto men;
governing, sanctifying, teaching, and enlightening with his Holy Spirit,
all those that are spiritually-minded; who live in faith, and hope, and
prayer, to be redeemed from the nature and power of this evil world.
Follow but this simple, plain spirit of the gospel, loving God with all
your heart, and your neighbor as yourself; and then you are Christ's
disciple, and have his authority to let the dead bury their dead.

[Way-2-29] "God is a spirit, in whom you live and move and have your
being; and he stays not till you are a great scholar, but till you turn
from evil, and love goodness, to manifest his holy presence, power, and
life, within you.  It is the love of goodness, that must do all for you;
this is the art of arts; and when this is the ruling spirit of your
heart, then Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, will come unto you, and make
their abode with you, and lead you into all truth, though you knew no
more books than I do."

[Way-2-30] So ended Rusticus.  It is not easy for me, Theophilus, to
tell you, how much good I received from this simple instruction of
honest Master Rusticus; for master I may well call him, since he, in so
few words, taught me a better lesson of wisdom, than ever I had heard
before.

[Way-2-31] What a project was it, to be grasping after the knowledge of
all the opinions, doctrines, disputes, heresies, schisms, councils,
canons, alterations, additions, inventions, corruptions, reformations,
sects, and churches, which 1700 years had brought forth through all the
extent of the Christian world!  What a project this, in order to be a
divine, that is, in order to bear true witness to the power of Christ,
as a deliverer from the evil of flesh, and blood, and hell, and death,
and a raiser of a new birth and life from above!  For as this is the
divine work of Christ, so he only is a true and able divine, that can
bear a faithful testimony to this divine work of Christ.

[Way-2-32] How easy was it for me to have seen with Rusticus, that all
this labyrinth of learned enquiry into such a dark, thorny wilderness of
notions, facts, and opinions, could signify no more to me now, to my own
salvation, to my interest in Christ, and obtaining the Holy Spirit of
God, than if I had lived before it had any beginning!  But the blind
appetite of learning gave me no leisure to apprehend so plain a truth.
Books of divinity indeed I have not done with; but I will esteem none to
be such, but those that make known to my heart the inward power and
redemption of Jesus Christ.  Nor will I seek for anything even from such
books, but that which I ask of God in prayer; viz., how better to know,
more to abhor and resist the evil that is in my own nature; and how to
attain a supernatural birth of the divine life brought forth in me: all
besides this is pushpin.  The shipwrecked man wants only to get to
shore.  Did we see the truth of our state as he does, we should have but
one want, and that would be, to get possession of our first created
state.  There is no misery but in the evil that is in our own fallen
state; this is our shipwreck, and great distress; nor is there any
happiness, but in having the first life of God, and all goodness, opened
again in the soul.  He that is not intent upon this one thing needful,
is not a wise Christian, much less a divine, or one qualified to make
known to others the mystery of the power of Christ in the work of
redemption.

[Way-2-33] But now I go back to that which I first spoke of; and though
I give up all that I said of putting out Jacob Behmen in new language,
with comments, &c.  yet I must still desire, that, some way or other, he
may be made more plain and intelligible; call it by what name you
please.

[Way-2-34] Theophilus.  Jacob Behmen may be considered, (1.)  as a
teacher of the true ground of the Christian religion.  (2.)  As a
discoverer of the false anti-Christian church, from its first rise in
Cain, through every age of the world, to its present state in all and
every sect of the present divided Christendom.  (3.)  As a guide to the
truth of all the mysteries of the kingdom of God.  In these three
respects, which contain all that anyone can possibly want to know or
learn from any teacher; he is the strongest, the plainest, the most
open, intelligible, awakening, convincing writer, that ever was.  As to
all these three matters, he speaks to everyone, as himself saith, in the
sound of a trumpet.  And here to pretend to be an explainer of him, or
make him fitter for our apprehension, in these great matters, is as
vain, as if a man should pipe through a straw, to make the sound of a
trumpet better heard by us.

[Way-2-35] Further, he may be considered, (4.)  as a relater of depths
opened in himself, of wonders which his spirit had seen and felt in his
ternario sancto.  Now in this respect he is no teacher, nor his reader a
learner; but all that he saith is only for the same end as St.  Paul
spoke of his having been in the third heaven, and hearing things not
possible to be spoken in human words.  And yet in these matters it is,
that most of his readers, especially if they are scholars, are chiefly
employed; everyone in his way trying to become masters of them.  Thus,
when he first appeared in English, many persons of this nation, of the
greatest wit and abilities, became his readers; who, instead of entering
into his one only design, which was their own regeneration from an
earthly to an heavenly life, turned chemists, and set up furnaces to
regenerate metals, in search of the philosopher's stone.  And yet, of
all men in the world, no one has so deeply, and from so true a ground,
laid open the exceeding vanity of such labor, and utter impossibility of
success in it from any art or skill in the use of fire.  And this must
with truth be affirmed of him, that there is not any possible error,
that you can fall into in the use of his books, but what he gives you
notice of beforehand, and warns you against it in the most solemn
manner; and tells you, that the blame must be yours, if you fall into
it.  Neither is there any question that you can put, nor advice or
direction that you can ask, but what he has over and over spoke to;
telling you, in the plainest manner, what the mystery is which his books
contain; how, and by whom, and for what end, they are to be read.

[Way-2-36] There are two sorts of people to whom he forbids the use of
his books, as uncapable of any benefit from them, and who will rather
receive hurt, than any good from them.  The first sort he shows in these
words: "Loving reader, if thou lovest the vanity of the flesh still, and
art not in an earnest purpose of the way to the new birth, intending to
be a new man, then leave the above-written words in these prayers
unnamed, or else they will turn to a judgment of God in thee."*
{*Repent.  p.  42} Again, "Reader, I admonish you sincerely, if you be
not in the way of the prodigal, or lost son, returning to his father
again, that you leave my book, and read it not; it will do you harm.
But if you will not take warning, I will be guiltless; blame nobody but
yourself."** {**Three Prin.}

[Way-2-37] In this advice, so different from that of other writers, he
shows the truth and reality of his own regenerated state; and that the
very same spirit speaks in him, as formerly said, "Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand.  Unless a man deny himself, and forsake
all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.  No man can come unto me,
except the Father draweth him.  Except a man be born again from above,
he cannot see the kingdom of God.  He that is of God, heareth God's
word.  Come unto me, all ye that labor, are weary and heavy-laden."  For
all these texts of scripture say that very self-same thing that Jacob
Behmen doth, when he absolutely requires his reader to be in the way of
the returning prodigal.  It is not rules of morality observed, or an
outward blameless form of life, that will do: for pride, vanity, envy,
self-love, and love of the world, can be, and often are, the heart of
such a morality of life.  But the state of the lost son is quite another
thing; and must be the state of every man: as soon as he comes to
himself, and has seeing eyes, he will then, like him, see himself far
from home; that he has lost his first paradise, his heavenly Father, and
the dignity of his first birth; that he is a poor, beggarly slave in a
foreign land, hungry, ragged, and starving, amongst the lowest kind of
beasts, not so well fed and clothed as they are: when thus finding
himself, he saith, "I will arise, and go to my Father," &c.  then has he
his first fitness for the mysteries opened in Jacob Behmen's writings;
for they are addressed to man only in this supposed state; they have no
fitness to him but in this state; and therefore no one, whether Jew,
Christian, or Deist, who does not find and feel himself to be the very
lost son described in the parable, has any capacity to receive benefit
from them, but they will be a continual stumbling block to him.  And it
is just thus with the gospel itself; wherever it is received and
professed, without something of this preparation of heart, without this
sensibility of the lost son, there it can only be a stone of stumbling,
and help the earthly man to form a religion of notions and opinions from
the unfelt meaning of the letter of the gospel.

[Way-2-38] Secondly, the other sort of people, whom he excludes from his
books, and for whom he has writ nothing, are the men of reason, who give
themselves up to the light of reason, as the true touchstone of divine
truths.  To these he declares over and over, that he has not his light
from reason; and that he writes nothing to reason.  "The rational man,"
saith he, "understands nothing in reference to God; for it is without
and not in God."  Again, "The true understanding must flow from the
inward ground, out of the living Word of God.  In which inward ground,
all my knowledge concerning the divine and natural ground, hath taken
its rise, beginning, and understanding.  I am not born of the school of
this world, and am a plain simple man; but by God's Spirit and will am
brought, without my own purpose and desire, into divine knowledge in
high natural searchings."* {*Epist.  p.  121.} Again, "He that will
learn to understand the true way, let him depart from and forsake his
own reason."** {**p.  138} "If my writings," says he, "come into your
hands, I would that you should look upon them as of a child's, in whom
the highest has driven his work; for there is that couched therein,
which no reason may understand or comprehend."  {Ibid.  p.  141.} Again,
"Reason must be blinded, kept under, and not allowed to stir."* {*p.
68.} Again, "Reason must yield up its own hearing and life, and give
itself up to God, that God may live in the understanding of man, else
there is no finding in the divine wisdom.  All that is taught and spoken
concerning God, without the Spirit of God, is but Babel."** {**Epist.
p.  9} Again, "We must wholly reject our own reason; it is not available
to help us to the light, but is a mere leading astray, and keeping us
back.  This we intimate to the reader, that he may know what he readeth.
Let none account it for a work of outward reason."  Again, "Speaking of
the mystery, {Three-fold L. p.  68,88.} he saith, "pray to God the most
high, that he would be pleased to open the door of knowledge, without
which no man will understand my writings; for they surpass the astral
reason; they apprehend and comprehend the divine birth; and therefore
only the like spirit can understand them aright.  No reasoning or
speculating reacheth them, unless the mind be illuminated from God, to
the finding of which the way is faithfully shown to the seeking
reader."* {*Epist.  p.  138}

[Way-2-39] And now, Academicus, you may see how needless it is to ask
me, or anyone else, to help you to understand his works: he himself has
given you all the assistance that can be given: he has laid open before
you, in the utmost plainness, both the nature of the mystery, and the
one only possible way that you can partake of it.

[Way-2-40] Academicus.  You speak often of the mystery: pray, what am I
to understand by it?

[Way-2-41] Theophilus.  You are to understand by it, the deep and true
ground of all things.  A mystery, in which the birth and beginning of
eternal nature, or the first workings of the inconceivable God, opening
and manifesting his hidden triune Deity in an outward state of glory in
the splendor of united fire, light, and spirit, all kindled and
distinguished, all united and beatified by the hidden three.  In this
eternal nature, all inward powers, all the hidden riches of the
incomprehensible Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are from eternity to
eternity brought forth into outward majesty, and visible glory.  In
which triune opening of heavenly glory, power, and majesty, the triune
God beholdeth himself as in his own manifestation, is clothed as with
his own garment, dwelleth as in his own habitation, and worketh all his
wonders of wisdom and omnipotence in and by, and according to, the
possible powers of this eternal nature.  For this eternal nature is the
first possibility of all after-beings and things; for before, or
without, this eternal nature, all is an eternal, silent, still,
unmovable, unperceivable nothingness; and this eternal nature is the
first manifestation, the first opening of the divine omnipotence; and in
it are included, in its own infinite bounds, all the height and depth,
and extent, of the divine wisdom and powers.  All that God is, and can
do, or bring forth from himself, is done in and by the working of his
triune spirit in this eternal nature.

[Way-2-42] This is the great scene of his eternal wisdom and
omnipotence, in which new wonders are eternally rising up, and declaring
the fathomless depths of the riches of the invisible triune Deity.  And
to say, that God can do no more, than what he can do through and by the
possible powers of this eternal nature, is only saying, that he can do
more than what he can do by himself, because this eternal nature is the
eternal manifestation of the total God, or an out-birth of that which
the Deity is, in its invisible power and Deity.

[Way-2-43] Out of this transcendent eternal nature, which is as
universal and immense as the Deity itself, do all the highest beings,
cherubims and seraphims, all the hosts of angels, and all intelligent
spirits, receive their birth, existence, substance, and form.  They are
all so many different, finite, bounded forms of the heavenly fire, and
light of eternal nature, into which creaturely beings the invisible
triune God breatheth his invisible Spirit, by which they become both the
true children and likeness of the invisible Deity, and also the true
offspring of his eternal nature; and are fitted to rejoice with God, to
live in the life of God, and live and work, and have their being, in
that eternal nature, or kingdom of heaven, in which the Deity itself
liveth and worketh.  And they are one, united in one, God in them, and
they in God, according to the prayer of Christ for his disciples; that
they, and he, and his holy Father, might be united in one.* {*John xvi.}

[Way-2-44] This is in part what you are first to understand concerning
the mystery.

[Way-2-45] But, secondly, it is a mystery, in which the creation and
fall of angels, with all its consequences in them, and their kingdom; in
which the system of this visible universe, why, and from what, and how
it came to be as it is; the birth of the sun and the planets, why and
how they come to have such difference in nature, place, and office, as
also of all the stars; the nature of every creaturely life, and ground
of its vast variety; the cause of every inanimate dead thing; a mystery
in which the creation, dignity, and perfection, of the first angelic man
in paradise; the whole kingdom of nature, and kingdom of grace; their
connection, difference, and mutually affecting and working upon one
another under the providence of the invisible Spirit of God, from the
beginning to the end of time, are all unfolded from their first root and
cause.

[Way-2-46] Thirdly, it is a mystery, in which the ground of Christian
redemption, its whole nature, absolute necessity, and the working of all
its parts both in the redeemer and in the redeemed, are set forth in the
utmost degree of clearness; where the whole process of Christ, as
incarnate, living, suffering, dying, rising from the dead, ascending
into heaven, and sitting at the right hand of God, and governing his
church on earth by his Holy Spirit; and all the practical duties of the
gospel, whether of faith and hope, or of self-denial; dying to this
world, and strict conformity to the life and Spirit of Christ; are all
demonstrated from the deepest ground of the nature of things, to be
absolutely necessary to the recovery and redemption of the fallen human
nature.

[Way-2-47] This, sir, is, in some degree, the mystery which it has
pleased the Spirit of God to open in this plain and unlearned man.

[Way-2-48] Academicus.  Well, Theophilus, I entirely consent to this
account you have given of it, and think it is sufficiently supported by
what is to be found in his books; they seem to mean all these great
matters which you mentioned.  But then, sir, give me leave to tell you,
that I think it is impossible for you to defend what you have said above
concerning reason; or to show the unreasonableness of my demanding
rational illustrations and comments.  For if this is the truth, that his
works contain the ground and philosophy of nature, and all creatures;
surely they must not only allow the use of our reason, but call for the
highest and most acute exercise of it.  For what can enter into the
reasons and philosophy of things, but reason?  Or what do all these
great matters appeal to, but to our reason?  I see no possibility of
denying this; and if this be granted, all that has been said about
silencing our reason, must be given up.

[Way-2-49] Theophilus.  The conclusion, my friend, that you here think
to be so just and strong, as not possible to be denied, is so far from
being so, that it is a glaring absurdity; and the quite contrary to that
one only true conclusion, which you should have made, and which so
easily and naturally flowed from what was said.  For if the mystery is
the deep ground of all things, of all nature, and all creatures, &c.
then the one conclusion that infallibly flows from it, is this, that no
acuteness or ability of natural reason can so much as look into it.  For
natural reason is no older than flesh and blood; it has no higher a
nature or birth than natural doubting; it had no existence when nature
began its first workings, and therefore can bear no witness to them.  It
was not present, had no eyes, when things first came forth; it never
stood in the center, from whence the birth of everything must arise; it
never saw the forming of the first seeds of every life: and yet the
mystery, you see, contains all this: and therefore the one plain and
necessary conclusion is this; that natural reason is, and must be, as
incapable of entering into this mystery, as flesh and blood is incapable
of entering into the kingdom of heaven.

[Way-2-50] Behold, now, what a flagrant proof you have given of the
vanity, weakness, and blindness of natural reason in divine matters.
Your reason saw, with the utmost certainty, that the mystery must be an
appeal to reason, merely because it contained such an height and depth
of a divine philosophy; and yet the height and depth of its matters is
the one full proof, that reason can have nothing to do with it.  This
may show you by what means Babel has built itself all over the Christian
world.  For, by the light of this Babylonian reason, the defenders and
opposers of doctrines confute one another with such a certainty and
strength of reason, as you saw, that reason must be the only judge of
the mystery, from which it is just as much excluded by its own nature,
as the mole under ground is, by its nature, excluded from the flight and
sight of the towering eagle.

[Way-2-51] Academicus.  Pray then tell me, how a man is to attain the
knowledge of the mystery, or have any share in the light of it.

[Way-2-52] Theophilus.  There is but one possible way, and that is this:
it must be born in you.  All true knowledge, either of God or nature,
must be born in you.  You cannot possibly know anything of God, but so
far as God is manifested in you; so far as his light and Holy Spirit is
born in you, as it is born in him, and liveth and worketh in you, as it
liveth and worketh in him.  A distant, absent, separate God, is an
unknown God.  For God can only manifest God, as light can only manifest
light, and darkness make darkness to be known.

[Way-2-53] Again, you can have no real knowledge of nature, and its
inward working power, but so far as the workings of nature, and the
birth of things, are a working and birth in yourself.  Natural reason
may trade in the outside of things; it may measure, and make drafts of
magnitude, height, and distance of things on the earth, and above the
earth; it may make many and fine experiments of the powers of every
element: but then this is going no farther into the ground of nature,
than when the potter makes curious vessels with his clay and fire.

[Way-2-54] To count the stars, to observe their places or motions, is
just the same height of natural knowledge, as when the shepherd counts
his sheep, and observes their time of breeding.

[Way-2-55] This world, with all its stars, elements, and creatures, is
come out of the invisible world; it has not the smallest thing, or the
smallest quality of anything, but what is come forth from thence; and
therefore every quality of everything is what it is, and worketh that
which worketh, by a secret power and nature in and from the invisible
world.  Bitter, sweet, sour, hard, soft, hot, cold, &c.  have all of
them their first seed and birth in the invisible world, called eternal
nature.  The irrational animals of this world feel all these things: the
rational man goes farther; he can reason and dispute about their outward
causes and effects: but the mystery of eternal nature must first be
opened in man, before he can give the divine philosophy of them.  For as
they all come from thence, have their nature, birth, and growth, from
thence; so no philosophy, but that which comes from thence, can give the
true ground of them.

[Way-2-56] If man himself was not all these three things, viz., (1.)  a
birth of the holy Deity; (2.)  a birth of eternal nature; and, (3.)
also a microcosm of all this great outward world; that is, of everything
in it, its stars and elements; and if the properties of every creaturely
life were not in an hidden birth in him; no omnipotence of God could
open the knowledge of divine and natural things in him.

[Way-2-57] For God can only manifest that, which there is to be
manifested; and therefore only open that, which before lay unopened, and
as in a state of hiddenness or death.  Nothing can come forth from man,
or any creature, but that which first had its seed in him; and to think,
that any knowledge can be put into him, but that which is a birth of his
own life, is as absurd as to think, that the tree and its branches may
first grow, and then be brought to the root.

[Way-2-58] We are led into mistakes about this matter from the common
practice of the world, which calls everything knowledge, that the
reason, wit, or humor of man prompts him to discourse about; whether it
be fiction, conjecture, report, history, criticism, rhetoric, or
oratory: all this passes for sterling knowledge; whereas it is only the
activity of reason, playing with its own empty notions.

[Way-2-59] From this idea of knowledge it is, that when this rational
man turns his thoughts to the study of divinity, he is content with the
same knowledge of divine matters, as he had in these exercises of his
reason; and he proceeds in the same manner, as when he studied history
and rhetoric.

[Way-2-60] He turns his mind to hearsay, to conjecture, to criticism,
and great names; and thinks he is then a member of the true church, when
he knows it as plainly as he knows the ancient commonwealth of Rome.
His knowledge of the being of God stands upon the same bottom, and is
made known to him by the same means and methods of proof, as he comes to
be assured, that once upon a time there was a first man, and his name
was Adam.  His knowledge of the kingdom of heaven is looked upon to be
sufficient, as soon as he knows it, as he knows that there is such a
place as Constantinople.  When he turns his inquiries into the mysteries
of Christian redemption, he looks as much out of himself as when he is
searching into the antiquities of Greece; and appeals to the same helps
for his knowledge, as when he wants to know the inward structure of
Solomon's temple, and all its services, &c.

[Way-2-61] This is the great delusion which has long overspread the
Christian world; and all countries, and all libraries, are the proof of
it.  It is this power and dominion of reason in religious matters, that
Jacob Behmen so justly calls the anti-Christ in Babel; for it leads men
from the life and truth of the mysteries of Christ, to put a carnal
trust in a confused multitude of contrary notions, inventions, and
opinions.  And the thing is unavoidable, it cannot be otherwise with
reason; it cannot do more good with, or make a better use of, gospel
doctrines; it is anti-Christ as soon as ever it is admitted to debate
and state the nature of any divine truth.  And that for these two great
reasons: first, because it has absolutely the same incapacity for it, as
the man that is born blind hath for the light.  Wherein now lieth the
incapacity of the blind man, to speak or think anything truly about
light?  It is because he is born and bred in another world, where
nothing of light ever did or can enter; it is because there is the gulf
of a whole birth betwixt him and the light of this world; and therefore,
though he lives ever so long, reasons ever so much, or hears ever so
many speeches, about the light, all that he gets by it is only more
false ideas of the unknown thing.

[Way-2-62] Now this is strictly the incapacity of reason, to speak, or
think anything truly of the divine life.  It is because it is born and
bred in another world, in the darkness of flesh and blood, into which no
perception or sensibility of God and heaven can enter; it is because
there is the gulf of a whole birth betwixt it, and the light of God and
heaven; and therefore, let reason, from age to age, hear, read, and
dispute ever so much about the light of God and heaven, all that it can
get by it, is only to be enriched with more and more fictions and
falsities about the unknown thing.

[Way-2-63] Secondly, natural reason, whenever judging or ruling in
divine matters, must be anti-Christ, because it cannot make any other
use of the mysteries of religion, or do anything else with them, but in
the same spirit, and for the same ends, that it receiveth and useth the
things of this world.  It matters not, what are the names or natures of
the things, whether you call them spiritual or temporal: natural reason
can make but one and the same use of them; it can only turn them to an
earthly use, to worldly prosperity, to private interest, honor, power,
or distinction.  And the thing is unavoidable, it is impossible to be
otherwise; it is not a fault that reason might amend, if it would; but
is as much its own nature, as it is natural to flame to ascend.  Now
everything must act according to its nature; every kind of life must be
for itself, for its own good.  Now reason has no higher a birth and
nature, than the spirit of this world; it must be as worldly as its
birth is, and cannot possibly have anything else but worldly views, and
the interests of its own flesh and blood, in everything that it can make
any use of.  This is as essential to the natural reason of man, as to
the natural subtlety of every beast; for they have both the same
original from the light and life of this world, have both the same
earthly nature, and can act only in an earthly manner, to serve the same
ends of an earthly life.  The reason of the one has no more of God and
the divine nature in it, than the subtlety of the other.  And hence it
is, that man, following only the cunning of his natural reason, is often
more mischievous than the worst of beasts.  And thus, you see how
reason, ruling in divine things, is and must be anti-Christ: first, as
it turns the living mysteries of God into lifeless ideas, and vain
opinions; and, secondly, as it sets up a worldly kingdom of strife,
hatred, envy, division, and persecution, in defense of them.  And
therefore it is a fundamental truth, that man has no capacity for divine
knowledge, till the particle of divine life, lost in the fall, is
awakened; in which alone, the mystery of God and the divine nature can
have a birth.

[Way-2-64] Academicus.  You have carried your point, Theophilus, with a
high hand, and I rejoice in seeing this matter so well proved.  But
still I would ask you something, that I know not how to express; I would
fain understand more clearly, how this mystery of God, and eternal
nature, is to be born in me.

[Way-2-65] Theophilus.  Everything, Academicus, is, and must be, its own
proof; and can only be known from and by itself.  There is no knowledge
of anything, but where the thing itself is, and is found, and possessed.
Life, and every kind and degree of life, is only known by life; and so
far as life reaches, so far is there knowledge, and no farther.
Whatever knowledge you can get by the searching and working of your own
active reason, is only like that knowledge, which you may be said to
have got, when you have searched for a needle in a load of straw, till
you have found it.

[Way-2-66] For nothing that is brought into the mind from without, or is
only an idea beheld by our reasoning faculty, is any more our knowledge,
than the seeing our natural face in a glass, is seeing our own selves.
And all the ideas or images that your reason can form of any absent,
unpossessed thing, is no more a part of your own knowledge, than your
drawing a picture of your own hand is making a member of your own body.
It is therefore a vain and fruitless inquiry, to be asking beforehand
for the knowledge of any unpossessed matters; for knowledge can only be
yours, as sickness and health is yours, not conveyed into you by a
hearsay notion, but the fruit of your own perception and sensibility of
that which you are, and that which you have in yourself.  How often have
you been warned against this procedure, in words like these?  "Therefore
let the reader be warned not to dive farther into these very deep
writings, nor plunge his will deeper, than so far as he apprehendeth: he
should always rest satisfied with his apprehension for in his
apprehension, he standeth yet in that which hath its reality; and
therefore he erreth not, how deep soever the Spirit leadeth him: for to
one more will be given than to another.  And this is the only mark to be
observed, that every one continue steadfast in humility towards God, and
submit himself, that he may make the will and the deed as he pleaseth.
When you do that, you are in yourself as dead; for you desire nothing
but God's will, and the will of God is your life, which goeth inward
even to the opening of the highest mysteries."* {*Threefold L. p.  158.}

[Way-2-67] One would have thought, Academicus, that this advice, if only
from the uncommon nature of it, should have had more effect upon you.
For it is not only new to you, but to every reader; there being nothing
like it, either for the sense, the sobriety, or the depth of its matter,
ever given by the wisest of philosophers to their readers.

[Way-2-68] Truth, my friend, whatever you may think of it, is no less
than the savior and redeemer of the world.

[Way-2-69] Hear therefore its own language: "If any man will be my
disciple, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and come after
me."  He does not say, "Let him get a clear and distinct idea of me,
what, and how I am God and man in the unity of my person"; he only tells
him what he is to part with, what he must put off, to be made a child of
the light.  Search and look where you will, this denial of self is the
one only possible way to the truth.  For nothing has separated us from
truth, nothing stands betwixt us and truth, but this self of an earthly
life, which is not from God, but from our wandering out of our first
created state.

[Way-2-70] God created us in and for the light; and had Adam kept his
first state, he had not been an ignorant, blind pilgrim in the darkness
of this world, but the illustrious opener of all its wonders in the
light of God.  But as this light and knowledge was lost in Adam, so it
can only be recovered by him who came to restore all that was lost, and
who justly called himself the light of the world.  Would you therefore
be a disciple of truth, you must not, with Pilate, ask, "What is truth?"
or consult the schools, how you shall form an idea of it: but you must
alter your life, put a stop to all earthly lusts, renounce all that you
are, and have from self; give up all the workings of your own reason,
and your own will; and then, and then only, are you fitted for that
unction from above which can teach you all things.  But till Christ, who
is the one fountain of life and light, be opened in you; it is in vain,
that you rise up early, and late take rest, in quest of truth; for he
himself hath said, "Without me, ye can do nothing."  And every son of
earthly Adam, however naturally enriched with the spirit, and light, and
arts of this world, is born, and must remain, a spirit in prison, till
Christ is found to be an inward preacher, and light within him.  As he
is the one resurrection from the dead, so is he the one deliverer from
everything that has the nature of death, darkness, and ignorance.  And
to expect seeing eyes, hearing ears, and sensibility of heart, from
anything but that eternal Word, by which we were at first made, is
robbing God and Christ of more honor, is a more idolatrous departure
from the true worship and dependence upon him, than if we sometimes
hoped to have good from this or that saint's praying for us.  For this
is a truth, that admits of no restriction, but reaches from one end of
the earth to the other, that as no man can come unto the Father, but
through the Son; so no one can come at any divine knowledge either in
grace or nature, but through him alone.

[Way-2-71] The schools of this world are of no higher a nature, than the
markets of this world; and, when rightly used, serve only to the end of
this earthly life.  But as markets and traffic seldom keep within their
just bounds, but become serviceable to vanity, earthly lusts, and all
the luxury of life; so it mostly happens in our learned labors; we grow
old, and blear-eyed, in studies that nourish pride and envy, division
and contention; and only help our old man to be content with the riches
of his fallen nature, and feel no necessity of being born again.

[Way-2-72] Would you therefore be a divine philosopher, you must be a
true Christian; for darkness is everywhere, but in the kingdom of God,
and truth nowhere to be found by man, but in a new birth from above.
Man was created in and for the truth; that is, he was created in the
truth of the divine light, to see and hear, to taste and feel, to find
and enjoy all things in the truth of the divine life brought forth in
him.  And therefore it is, that for fallen man there is but one remedy;
it is only the truth that can make him free.  Truth is the one only
resting-place of the soul; it is its atonement and peace with God; all
is, and must be, disquiet, a succession of lying vanities, till the soul
is again in the truth, in which God at first created it.  And therefore
said the Truth, "Learn of me; for I am meek, and lowly of heart; and ye
shall find rest unto your souls."

[Way-2-73] Academicus.  Pray, Theophilus, stop a while: surely your zeal
carries you too far.  All ages of the world have seemed to agree in
this, that the gospel teaches purely the simplicity of a godly life;
calls no man to be a philosopher, nor gives the smallest instruction in
matters that relate to philosophy.

[Way-2-74] Theophilus.  All this, Academicus, is very true; but then,
this very simplicity and plainness of the gospel, turning man only from
this world, to a faith, and hope, and desire of God, is the one reason,
and full proof, that it alone is a true guide into the highest school of
divine wisdom and philosophy; not only because goodness is our greatest
wisdom, but because the mysteries of God, of grace, of nature, of time
and eternity, can no other possible way be opened in man, but by this
simplicity of a godly life taught in the gospel; because only the godly
life hath knowledge of God; just as the creaturely life hath only
knowledge of the creature, and the painful life hath knowledge of pain.
The scripture saith, "that only the Spirit of God knoweth the things of
God."  And indeed, how can it possibly be otherwise?  For since the
Spirit of God is the spirit and life that goeth through all nature and
creature, and only openeth its own hidden powers therein; since it is
that which is the former of everything; that which makes everything to
have the life that it hath, and to work as it worketh; nothing but the
Spirit of God can possibly know the things of God: and therefore, of
necessity, this Spirit of God must be in man, and work in man, as it is
in nature, and worketh in nature, before man can enter into the
knowledge and working of God in nature.  And therefore here you have two
immutable, and fundamental truths: (1.)  that all our ignorance of God
and nature is, and must be, purely and solely, the want of the Spirit
and life of God in us: and, (2.)  that therefore the one only way to
divine knowledge is the way of the gospel, which calls and leads us to a
new birth of the divine nature brought forth in us.

[Way-2-75] Academicus.  I have nothing that I can, or would, object to
what you have said.  But still I must say, that I do not enough
apprehend how the Spirit and life of God must thus, of all necessity, be
born in us; nor, indeed, do I entirely comprehend how it is done.  Human
reason, or human instruction, I see plain enough, cannot help me to any
divine light.  But suppose God should send an angel to instruct me, and
that frequently, would not divine knowledge be then imparted to me?  And
yet this would not be a birth of God in me.  Or, will you say, that God
cannot sufficiently instruct me, even by the highest of his angels?

[Way-2-76] Theophilus.  An angel, sir, may instruct you, as the
scriptures instruct you; but it is only such an instruction, as may
direct you where and how to obtain that light, which neither the letter
of scripture, nor the voice of an angel, can bring forth in you.  The
highest angel neither hath, nor ever can have, any more of a redeeming
power in it, than the dead paper on which the scriptures are written.
But you are to observe, and mark it well, that you cannot have divine
light from any other thing, but that which hath full power to redeem
you: for light is not only life, but the perfection, and highest state
of it; and therefore nothing can bring forth light, but that which can
bring forth the truth and perfection of life.

[Way-2-77] Every other thing, besides the life and light of God, stands
only in a state of ministerial service towards you: whether it be words
of message from God, written on paper, engraven on tables of stone, or
spoken by the mouth of an angel, a prophet, or apostle; be it what it
will, it is only a creaturely thing; and its creaturely service can rise
no higher, nor go any farther, than to show the true way to him, who
only himself can be the truth, the life, and the light in you.  For the
light of God cannot, even by God himself, be communicated to you by any
creature; and the reason is, because the light of God is God himself: it
is the light of his own life: and therefore only himself can bring it
forth wherever it is; and no creature can possibly partake of his light,
but by having a birth in and from the divine nature: for the light of
God can never be separate from the divine nature, or be anywhere but
where the divine birth is.  And thus you fully see, that all that can be
divinely known, either in heaven, or on earth, can only be known in that
one way, and by that one means, by which fallen man can be saved;
namely, by a new birth of the light and Spirit of God within us.  And
therefore the simple way of the gospel is the one only way to attain all
the knowledge of all that, which can be known of God and nature: for
nothing can manifest God and nature, but the Spirit of God working in
man, as he worketh in nature, which can only be done by a new birth of
the divine nature, brought forth in man: but when man is thus born again
of God, then the life and Spirit of God is in him, and worketh in him,
as it doth in nature.  And thus it is, that man can only be a divine
philosopher, when Christ, who is the light of God, and the light of
nature, is revealed in him.  Then he is in that living Word, and that
living Word is in him, by which all things were at first made; and which
maketh, createth, and worketh in him, as it worketh in all things, both
in heaven and earth.

[Way-2-78] Academicus.  I never expected to have seen the gospel new
birth proved to be the only gate to all that divine knowledge which any
son of Adam ever had, or can have.  But you have proved it to be so,
beyond all possibility of denial.  And I now only want to have you go on
in this doctrine of the new birth; for I am persuaded, you can still add
something to that, which has already been said upon it, both as to the
ground, and nature, and fruits of it.

[Way-2-79] Theophilus.  You must remember, Academicus, that all that I
can by discourse, from the beginning to the end of this matter, do for
you, amounts only to thus much: it is like giving you a full assurance
of a wonderful pearl of glorious virtues, hidden in the ground of a
certain field, and showing you every step of the way you must take to
find it.  Now, if from month to month, you should be inquiring and
hearing of some new powers and virtues of this heavenly pearl; what good
does all this discourse and hearsay do you?  You are just as far from
the pearl itself, and have no more of it, than when you first heard of
it; and would be in the same distance from it, though you was always, to
the end of your life, loving to hear and talk about it.  I have had no
other end in all that is said of the new birth, but to assure you of the
truth of the thing, and the true way to it.  Now the way to the new
birth lies wholly in your will to it; and every step that you can take,
consists in a continual dying to that selfish corrupt will, which you
have from flesh and blood.  Nothing can make any change in you, but the
change of your will.  For everything, be it what it will, is a birth of
that will, which worketh in you.  You have nothing therefore to enquire
after, nor anything that you can judge of yourself by, but the state of
your mind, the working of your will and desire.  These will give you
more light than all the men or books in the world can give you: where
these are, there are you; and what these are, that are you: there you
live, and to that you belong; and there you must have all the good or
evil that can be called yours.

[Way-2-80] For nothing leads or carries you anywhere, nothing generates
either life or death in you, but the working of your mind, will, and
desire.  If your will is angelic, you are an angel, and angelic
happiness must be yours.  If your will is with God, you work with God;
God is then the life of your soul, and you will have your life with God
to all eternity.  If you follow an earthly will, every step you take is
a departure from God, till you become as incapable of God, and the life
of God, as the animals of this world.  If your will worketh in pride and
self-exaltation, in envy and wrath, in hatred and ill will, in deceit,
hypocrisy, and falseness, you work with the devil, you are generating
his nature within you, and making yourself ready for the kingdom of
hell.  And thus it is, that our works follow us; and that everyone will
be rewarded according to his works; and none can reap anything else but
that which he hath sown.  And the seed of everything that can grow in
us, is our will.  The will maketh the beginning, the middle, and the end
of everything; it is the only workman in nature; and everything is its
work.  It has all power; its works cannot be hindered; it carries all
before it; it creates as it goes; and all things are possible to it.  It
enters wherever it wills, and finds everything that it seeks; for its
seeking is its finding.  The will overrules all nature, because nature
is its offspring, and born of it; for all the properties of nature,
whether they be good or evil, in darkness or in light, in love or in
hatred, in wrath or in meekness, in pride or humility, in trouble or
joy, are all of them the offspring or birth of the will; as that liveth,
so they live; and as that changeth, so they change.  So that whatever
you are, or whatever you feel, is all owing to the working and creating
power of your own will.  This is your God or your devil, your heaven or
your hell; and you have only so much of one, or the other, as your will,
which is the first mover, is either given up to the one, or to the
other.

[Way-2-81] For where the will of man is not, there he hath nothing; and
where his will is, there is all that something, which he hath, be it of
what kind it will; and it is inseparable from him, till his will worketh
contrary to it.

[Way-2-82] Academicus.  Whence hath the will of man this mighty power,
that it can have nothing, but that which itself hath willed?

[Way-2-83] Theophilus.  You might as well ask, why a circle must be
perfectly round, or a straight line free from every degree of
crookedness.  For as it is not a circle till it is perfectly round, nor
a straight line till it is free from crookedness; so the will is not in
being, but so far as it is free, is its own mover, and can have nothing
but that which it willeth.  Secondly, the will is not a made thing,
which is made out of something, or that came out of some different
state, into the state of a will.  But the free will of man is a true and
real birth from the free, eternal, uncreated will of God, which willed
to have a creaturely offspring of itself, or to see itself in a
creaturely state.  And therefore the will of man hath the nature of
divine freedom; hath the nature of eternity, and the nature of
omnipotence in it; because it is what it is, and hath what it hath, as a
spark, a ray, a genuine birth of the eternal, free, omnipotent will of
God.  And therefore, as the will of God is superior to, and ruleth over
all nature; so the will of man, derived from the will of God, is
superior to, and ruleth over all his own nature.  And thence it is, that
as to itself, and so far as its own nature reacheth, it hath the freedom
and omnipotence of that will from which it is descended; and can have or
receive nothing, but what itself doth, and worketh, in and to itself.

[Way-2-84] And herein consisteth the infinite goodness of God, in the
birth of all intelligent creatures; and also the exceeding height,
perfection, and happiness of their created state: they are descended
from God, full of divine power; they can will and work with God, and
partake of the divine happiness.  They can receive no injustice, hurt,
or violence, either from nature or creature; but must be only that,
which they generate, and have no evil or hurt, but that which they do in
and to themselves.  All things stand in the will, and everything animate
or inanimate is the effect and produce of that will, which worketh in
it, and formeth it to be that which it is.  And every will, wherever
found, is the birth and effect of some antecedent will; for will can
only proceed from will, till you come to the first working will, which
is God himself.

[Way-2-85] And here, my friend, you have an easy entrance into the true
meaning of many important passages in the books of Jacob Behmen, like
those that follow: "All," says he, "is magical; the eternity is magical:
Magic is the mother of all things.  I speak from a magic ground.  Here
the reader must have magical eyes.  This hath a magical understanding,"
&c.  Vulgar reason is offended at these expressions, because the word
"magic" has, for many ages, been mostly used in a bad sense.  But don't
you be frighted at the sound of these words; they are not only innocent,
but truly good and wise, and deeply founded on the truth of things.
They have the most Christian and divine meaning; are strictly
conformable to the spirit of the gospel, as shall be shown by and by;
and are used for the best of ends; namely, to open the true ground of
eternal and temporal nature, and the birth of creatures in each of them.
They are to show how the hidden, invisible Deity acteth and worketh all
its wonders in both these worlds, in one and the same uniform way; as
also, how everything in religion, whether it be a mystery of God, a
grace of God, or a duty of man, hath its whole ground, and nature and
efficacy, therein.

[Way-2-86] Now magic power meaneth nothing but the working of the will,
whether it be the divine, or the creaturely will; and everything that is
the work of the will, and is produced by it, is called its magic work,
which only means, that it is generated by and from the will, as a birth
brought forth by it.  The will is the workman, and the work is that,
which it bringeth forth out of itself.  So that by these words you are
always to understand these two things, the working, and the work of the
will.  And now, you may already sufficiently see, that their meaning is
not only innocent and good, but as necessarily, and divinely, to be
ascribed to God, as the power of bringing things into existence by the
working of his will.  For here you have the true ground and original of
the creating power of God; how everything that is not God; is yet come
from him, and out of him, as so many births of his invisible power,
breaking forth into visibility, and sensible qualities of an outward
life.

[Way-2-87] The first manifestation of the invisible God, is that which
is called, and is, eternal nature; which is the eternity of all possible
powers and qualities of life, the first source of every natural power
that can be in any creature.  All these qualities of life, in their
eternal birth, and rising from one another by the working will of God,
are the outbirth, or outward glory of God, in which he manifests his
triune, invisible Deity in a threefold life of fire, light, and spirit,
which are the ground of all the qualities of life, sensibility, power,
and spirit, that ever were, or can be found in any creature.  Everything
that exists, or thinks, or moves, or finds itself in any kind or degree
of sensibility, is from, and out of, this glassy sea of these united
powers of life.  And this whole manifestation of all the possible
powers, and perfection of life and glory, is called that kingdom of
heaven, in which God dwelleth; and is, as it were, his divine workhouse,
out of which he is perpetually giving forth new works, and forms of
wonder.

[Way-2-88] This manifestation of God is a magic birth from the triune
working will of the hidden Deity, which willed to see itself in this
opened, outward show of all the possible powers of life and glory; and
from whence new worlds of finite divine beings, as so many living images
of God, might have a possibility of coming forth.  For without nature,
God must be by himself, and continue an unmanifested God.  For no form
or creature can be, unless there be something antecedent to it, that can
be formed.  Life must be, before there can be any finite living
creatures; just as light must be, before there can be any seeing eyes.
And therefore the manifestation of God in an outward glory of all the
possible powers, qualities, perfections of life, called eternal nature,
must be, or there could be no possibility for the existence of any
creature.

[Way-2-89] Now this same working will of the triune Deity, which
manifested itself in an eternal nature, manifesteth itself in creaturely
forms, all generated from, all enlivened and animated with, that same
trinity of fire, light, and spirit, that constitutes eternal nature.  So
that all intelligent creatures are that in their finite being, which
eternal nature is in its infinite state.  And thus all of them are from
God, and from heaven, live in God, and may work with God, as God is in
heaven, and heaven in him; one life, one power, one will, and one
happiness with God.

[Way-2-90] Now everything that is not God, but after him, and distinct
from him, must be that which it is, from the working will of the Deity.
For since it cometh into being, only because it is willed to be, it can
have nothing in it, or be any other thing, but that which the working or
creating will brought forth.  And as all things began in and from this
working will; so all things must go on in it; and there can be no other
creator, worker, or former of things to all eternity, but the working
will of God, either mediately or immediately.  Nor can there be any
other nature in anything, but that which is the birth, or magic effect,
of a working will within it.  And everything that is done by the
creature, everything which it seeks and likes, or abhors and resists, is
all driven on by a working will, or magic power, which stirs, and
generates, and works within it.

[Way-2-91] Would you know now the true ground of all this?  It is this:
it is because will is the first original of all power, and the
omnipotence of God consisteth in nothing else but his working will; and
therefore no power ever was, or ever can be, anywhere else, but as it is
in God, and if the creature hath any power, it must have it, as God hath
it, in the working will.  For since all nature, with all its qualities,
births, and creatures, are all brought into being by the working will of
God; it evidently follows, that every creature, with every quality,
power, and property in it, is magically born, and therefore must have a
magic nature, that is, a nature that cometh from, and standeth in, a
working will.

[Way-2-92] And now, sir, you are come into a full view of the most
important matter of the mystery of all things; a matter which, if
rightly apprehended in the inward ground of your soul, puts an entire
end to all the jargon of a false philosophy, and to all those fictions
of doctrines and disputes, which reason has built upon the written Word
of God.

[Way-2-93] For nothing is effected by fiction and invention, by any
contrived arts or searchings of rational inquiries; all this is nothing,
because it toucheth not nature, but leaveth it to itself; which carrieth
on its own works by its own power, and can only work in its own way; and
must bring forth its own births independent of everything but its own
working life.  But all lieth in the will and working desire of the soul,
because will began and brought forth all that nature that lives in the
soul, and is the only life in it; and this life can work and grow from
nothing else, but that which first brought it forth.  Hence you see the
full meaning of these words of our author, "All is magical and that
magic is the mother of all things," and consequently, the only opener of
all divine knowledge.  All which expressions only imply thus much, that
the will, whether in God, or the creature, is the ground and seed of
everything; is the generating working power, which maketh and worketh
all things to be in that state and condition which they are; and that
everything begins, goes on, and ends, in the working of the will; and
that nothing can be otherwise, than as its will worketh; and therefore
eternity and time is magical; and magic is, and must be, the mother of
all things.

[Way-2-94] Now here you see, in the utmost degree of clearness, how all
true and false religion divide from one another.  For if nothing worketh
but the will, if nothing else carries on the work of nature; then all is
false and vain in religion but the working of the will; and nothing is
saving, or redeeming the life of the soul, but that which helps the will
to work towards God.

[Way-2-95] Hence it is, that our author so often tells his reader, that
when he sees and finds this magic birth of things, he is "delivered from
Babel"; not by running from one place to another, or from one system of
opinions to another, but by inwardly leaving all the workings of the
earthly self, all the paper buildings of natural reason, and turning to
God with the whole will and working desire of his heart.  This is the
right coming out of our own Babel of vain opinions into the truth and
reality of nature, where the living God of nature is found; not in
notions, but in the living working of the soul, and worshiped in spirit
and in truth.

[Way-2-96] I said, into the truth and reality of nature, because nature
is the standard of truth, and all is Babel but that which worketh with
nature, that is, with eternal nature; for as eternal nature is the
manifestation of the unchangeable God, so it must be as unchangeable in
itself, and its own workings, as God is; because it hath nothing in it,
but what is in and from the unchangeable God.  And therefore, God cannot
be manifest, or work in any creature, but as he is manifest, and worketh
in eternal nature; and therefore all that the creature doth is labor
lost, and a vain beating of the air, but that which it worketh with, and
according to eternal nature.  Because God never was, nor ever can be, or
be found, anywhere else but in his own heaven, or eternal nature.  And
no soul can by any one possible thing find, or be found by God, but by
standing before him in the same will and working as eternal nature doth.
And therefore all is fiction and Babel but the working of the will,
because nothing but the will can work with nature; and that for this
reason, because all life, and all nature, eternal and temporal, is what
it is, merely and solely, from the working of the will.  All things in
heaven and in earth stand in this magic birth; and nothing can change
its state, either for better or worse, but as the working of its will
changes.  Justly therefore is it said, that where this truth is found,
there is a full and true deliverance from Babel; that is, from all
strife, and zeal, and division about opinions, sects, and churches;
since the one thing that works either to life, or to death, the one
thing that alone opens heaven or hell for us, is with every individual
man in every place, and in every age of the world; and that one thing is
the working of the will.  And when, in any such man, his will is turned
from his own earthly self, and this earthly life and worketh with its
desire to God, then all these sayings of the scripture are true of him;
viz., that he is redeemed from this evil world--that he has his
conversation in heaven--that he is of God, and heareth God's Word--that
he is saved by faith--that Christ is revealed in him--that he is
Christ's, and Christ is his--that Christ is in him of a truth--and that
he is led by the Spirit of Christ.  All these texts would be true of
him, though he had never seen, nor heard, a syllable of the written Word
of God.

[Way-2-97] For the Word of God which saveth and redeemeth, which giveth
life and light to the soul, is not the word printed on paper, but is
that eternal, ever-speaking Word, which is the Son of God, who in the
beginning was with God, and was the God by whom all things were made.
This is the universal teacher and enlightener of all that are in heaven,
and on earth, who from the beginning to the end of time, without respect
of persons, stands at the door of every heart of man, speaking into it
not human words, but divine goodness; calling and knocking, not with
outward sounds, but by the inward stirring of an awakened divine life.
And therefore, as sure as that is true, which St.  John saith, that this
eternal Word "is the light of men, and the light that lighteth every man
that cometh into the world," so sure is it, that our savior and
salvation, our teacher and enlightener, from whom we have every good
thought, is Christ within us; not within this or that man, but in every
man wherever born, and in whom the light of life ariseth.  And indeed
how can it be otherwise?  For if God is the God of all men; and the Word
of God the life and light of all men; and all men are capable of
goodness; and all goodness can only be from God; and no goodness can
belong to man, but that which is within him; then every man must have
the Word, or Christ of God within him, and can have it nowhere else.
All teachers therefore, who teach men to look for life or salvation in
anything but from the Word and Spirit of God within them, stand
chargeable with the blood and death of souls; because, in all the
possibility of things, nothing can overcome that death which is in the
soul, but the Word, or Christ of God living and working in it.  For,
observe, man must have goodness in the same way as God hath goodness,
that is, from the divine nature; for goodness is nowhere else, neither
is anything else capable of it; and therefore, if goodness is to be in
man, the divine nature must, of all necessity, be first brought to life
within him.  But this cannot be, till the working will of our heart
turns and gives up itself wholly to the Word and Spirit of God within
us.  For we can have nothing but that, towards which the earnestness of
our will goeth.

[Way-2-98] Again, see here in a still higher degree of proof the
absolute necessity, and unspeakable benefit, of the spirit of prayer;
how it does, and must, in spite of all opposition, raise the fallen soul
out of the poverty of flesh and blood, into the riches of an heavenly
nature brought forth in it.  For since all things in heaven and earth
stand in a magic birth, or working of the will; the will is that, which
hath all power; it unites all that is united in heaven or on earth; it
divides and separates all that is divided in nature; it makes heaven,
and it makes hell; for there is no hell, but where the will of the
creature is turned from God; nor any heaven, but where the will of the
creature worketh with God.  Therefore, as we pray, so we are; and as our
will-spirit secretly worketh, so are we either swallowed up in the
vanity of time, or called forth into the riches of eternity.  And
therefore the spirit of prayer is most justly conceived, and most simply
expressed, when it is said to be the rising of the soul out of the
vanity of time into the riches of eternity: for all the vanity which the
soul hath, is from its living in, and loving the things of time; and
therefore it can only come out of the vanity of its state, by loving and
living in the truths, which are the riches of eternity: for the spirit
of prayer is the hunger of the soul; and as every hunger is, so it eats;
it always eateth that which it hungereth after, and hath a life suitable
to the nature, state, and condition, both of its hunger, and its food.
If it hungereth after the things of flesh and blood, it eateth nothing
else, and only groweth in the bestial life; and of the flesh must reap
the corruption that belongs to flesh: and if it hungereth after God, it
eateth the food which giveth life to the angels; it eateth the bread
that is come down from heaven; namely, the real heavenly body and blood
of Christ, which surely may be called the riches of eternity.

[Way-2-99] All the mysteries of religion, and the necessity of the whole
process of Christ in our redemption, have all of them their ground, and
necessity, and efficacy, in this magic nature of things, and are all of
them only for this one end; to help fallen man to have a working will
towards that first life, which he has lost.  And therefore no one joins
with the mysteries of redemption, or can have any share in them, but he
whose will turns wholly from this world, and hath all its workings
towards God and heaven.  And now, sir, see the plain, and easy, and
certain deliverance from all perplexity and vain labor in the disputes
and divisions of religion.  It is but opening your natural eyes, that
is, letting simple nature work with its own power, and all difficulties
are removed; and the way to God and goodness is as natural, and as free
from all perplexity, as the opening our eyes to see the light of the
sun.  For what is so natural to man as the working of the will?  And yet
he can have nothing, or be anything, different from that, to which his
will worketh.

[Way-2-100] Nor does this at all too much exalt the human will, or make
our salvation not to be the pure grace and gift of God to us, but quite
the contrary.  For the will here spoken of, is not the will of flesh and
blood, but that heavenly will, which is the only spark of the Deity in
us, given by the free grace of God to all mankind, as soon as fallen,
and called in scripture the inspoken Word of God in paradise; which was
the beginning of the redemption, when God first entered into a covenant
of salvation with Adam, and all his posterity.  This inspoken Word is
Christ, or the spark of the divine nature, which is the light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world.  And here, in this Christ
in us, lieth the will that hath the power of salvation in it; and all
its salvation is the salvation of Christ.  For it is the will of this
heavenly nature, hid in every man, that is the working will, that
bringeth forth the new birth of heaven in us; and therefore is the pure
free salvation of Christ, given to be a redeemer within us.  So that all
our salvation, though wrought out by this working will within us, is,
from the beginning to the end, the pure grace of God to us, and no
salvation of our own.

[Way-2-101] And thus, sir, you see, that every soul of man is partly
human, and partly divine; and is united to an earthly and an heavenly
nature; and so not only can, but must, always work either with one or
the other, and has nothing else to work with; and must and can be, or
have nothing else, but as he followeth or worketh with either of these
wills.  So that, infallibly to know both your present and future state,
what you are, and to what you belong, you need only to see, what you
cannot help seeing, how, and where, and to what, your will worketh.

[Way-2-102] And thus, from this knowledge of the magic nature of things,
which all are that which they are, solely from the working of the will
in everything, you are delivered from all vain labor and party zeal; and
are brought back to that pure and safe ground, on which God has placed
you to work out your own salvation, without any hindrance from any
builders of Babel, of whatever denomination.

[Way-2-103] The short is this: the whole matter of religion relates only
to life and death.  But life and death are both of them immutable, and
founded in the unchangeable nature of things.  Nothing can alter them,
or invent a new way, either to or from either of them.  To what purpose
then, is all this dividing into so many parties?  Why all this strife
and zeal about opinions?  Death and life go on their way, carry on their
own work, and stay for no opinions.  Does the stone stop, or alter its
tendency towards the earth?  Do the sparks and flame cease to fly
upwards, because philosophers dispute and quarrel about the reasons of
one or the other?  No; nature goes on in its own way, let reason say
what it will.  Now death and life have their own unchangeable nature and
working in and from themselves; and are just as distinct from, and
independent of, all opinions of men about them, as the things just now
mentioned: so that to will and work, as life willeth and worketh, and to
will and work, as death willeth and worketh, is the one only possible
way to partake either of life or death.  What a delusion is it
therefore, to grow grey headed in balancing ancient and modern opinions;
to waste the precious uncertain fire of life in critical zeal, and
verbal animosities; when nothing but the kindling of our working will
into a faith, that overcometh the world, into a steadfast hope, and ever
-burning love, and desire of the divine life, can hinder us from falling
into eternal death!

[Way-2-104] Academicus.  Oh!  Theophilus, you have led me into a depth,
that I never thought of seeing into.

[Way-2-105] For this magic power of everything, that works in all nature
and creature, shows me everything in a new view.  You might well say,
that reason has no power in this mystery; that nothing is proposed to
it: for since life and death have their own working within themselves,
and must at last, when time is at an end, divide and take possession of
everything, according as its will has worked either with one or the
other, it signifies no more to them what reason has been all this time
discoursing about, than in what language a man used to talk.  But before
you go any farther, I beg a word or two on these matters.  First, how I
am to understand our author, when he says, "Here the reader must have
magical eyes"; and, "This or that hath a magical understanding."  And,
secondly, that you would, as you promised, show, how the speaking thus
of this magical power of life, is strictly conformable to the spirit of
the gospel.

[Way-2-106] Theophilus.  As to your first matter, concerning magical
eyes; I should have thought the thing plain enough already.  But you may
understand it thus.  When a carpenter cuts timber into various shapes
and forms, and then joins one piece to another, till it is formed into
the shape of a house; this is no magical work, because one part does not
grow from the other, till the whole is brought forth, and therefore
there is no need of magical eyes to see what this work is.  But when an
oak groweth from an acorn, or a plant from a seed in the ground, here
the work is magical; that is, it is a birth or product generated from
the working will in the acorn and seed, from whence the stem, and all
its branches and fruits, grow forth; which working will continueth till
the plant or tree hath reached its limit, that is, till the working will
in the seed hath spent itself.  Now all this is a magical work, and
therefore can only be seen by such magical eyes as can see into the
beginning, and go on with the working of that which works and generates
in the tree or plant.

[Way-2-107] As to your other matter, how this language of the magical
working of the will is entirely conformable to the spirit of the gospel;
the answer is easy, because the thing is plain.  For the first possible
beginning of the Christian life, is, by the founder of it, expressly
laid in a new birth from above, and therefore plainly declared to be a
magical work, and to have no other nature; because a generating work,
and a magical work, are only different expressions for the same thing.
And as the beginning, so every following advancement in the Christian
life, is as really and truly only a growth of life, or magical birth
from the powers of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, upon the working will in
the soul, as the plant, from its first stirring in the seed, to its last
state, is only a growth from the powers of the sun, stars, and elements,
upon the working will in the seed.

[Way-2-108] Everything that is outward in religion, whether it be men or
things, planting or watering, is only for the sake of this inward birth;
either to direct man to it, to help him to work in it, or warn him of
that eternal death, which the will, working according to flesh and
blood, must inherit as its own genuine fruit.  And whoever fancies the
Christian life to be anything else than a birth growing up in God, till
it comes to the perfection of the divine life, by the same way of a
gradual growth from the seed, has not a syllable in the gospel, nor an
instance in nature, to plead in excuse of his fanciful error.

[Way-2-109] For nothing worketh in all nature or grace, but what worketh
as a birth, or magical growth of life.  For nothing can come from the
living God but life, nor for any other end, but to manifest some kind or
degree of life.  There are no dead forms, or lifeless inventions to be
found, till you come to the mechanic works of men's hands, and the
cobweb schemes of dead knowledge, brought forth by human reason.  For
reason is the old serpent called subtlety, the first and the last grand
deceiver of mankind, that takes them from the powerful workings of
nature, to follow the shadows of empty sounds, till all is swallowed up
either by final life or death, which will at last reap everything into
its own unchangeable barn.

[Way-2-110] Again, faith and hope, and love and desire towards God, are
the only gospel means of bringing forth the new birth; and therefore all
that the gospel requires, is a magical working of the will.

[Way-2-111] For all these powers, whether of faith, hope, love, and
desire towards God and the divine life, are only so many different
powers of the working of the will, and have all their efficacy, as so
many parts of it; and only alter, raise, and bring forth a new life,
because the working of the will is magical, and generates as it works,
and unites with that which it willeth.  And thus Christ, or the new man
in Christ Jesus, is formed in us, from a seed of heaven, which is the
will that can work towards God, till it becomes a godly birth, as the
seed works towards the sun, till it is changed into the birth of a
beauteous fragrant flower.

[Way-2-112] Again, hence it is, namely, from this magic power of the
working of the will, that our blessed Lord speaks so often of the
omnipotence of faith; viz., "that all things are possible to him that
believeth.  Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall
receive.  If ye had faith but as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say
to this tree, be thou plucked up by the root; and to this mountain, be
thou cast into the sea; and it should be done.  Thy faith hath saved
thee.  According to thy faith, so be it done unto thee."

[Way-2-113] Hence all these truths plainly follow: first, that faith,
which is in itself only the working of the will, is the source of all
power; and that all that is done in nature is done by it alone; and that
therefore all nature standeth in a magic working of the will.  For all
things could not be possible to him that believeth, but because faith,
or the working of the will, is the true source of all power in or over
nature.  Secondly, here is a full demonstration of the high and powerful
state, in which man was at first created!  A lord over all this outward
world; who could, by the working of his will, command the obedience of
all things about him.

[Way-2-114] This was the dominion he had over all the creatures on the
earth, in the sea, and in the air; not such a poor power as invented
weapons, or the strength of his hands and feet, could help him to; but a
power here mentioned, of standing still, and, by the faith or will of
his mind, making every creature to come or go, just as the faithful
disciple of Christ was, by his faith, to have power over every outward
thing of this world.

[Way-2-115] Now all this high state of his first power is undeniable
from the words of our savior.  For it is not to be supposed, that he
would turn men's thoughts to any such powers, as to have all things
obedient to their faith, or the working will of their minds, if this had
not been man's first created state, or such powers as did then belong to
it.  For no man or creature can have any higher power, than that which
belongs to his first created state.

[Way-2-116] And therefore all gospel faith, however wonderful in its
power, can only have somewhat of that first powerful faith, which man
had when he first came out of the hands of God.  And faith now in a
redeemer can only be the means of obtaining salvation, for this reason;
because faith was then that original high power in man, which could have
preserved him in his first perfection and glory of life.  Thus, when
Christ saith, "Thy faith hath saved thee," it is the same thing as if he
had said, faith had always such power; that faith was the strength and
glory of the first man, that could have saved him from falling under the
power of the stars and elements; that it was faith alone which could and
did put an end to his first paradisiacal glory, by turning its strength
and desire into the life of this world.  Again, when our Lord saith,
"According to thy faith, so be it done unto thee"; this was no new
thing, or new operation in the power of faith, but was only a
declaration of a truth as old as nature and creature, and was in reality
so much said of the powerful faith of the first man; and infallibly
shows, that as now, so then, nothing was done to him in his fall, but
that which was done according to the faith and working of his will.  For
this is God's immutable righteous procedure with man, that nothing but
his own works can follow him; and that, from first to last, whether
standing or falling, according to his faith, and working will, so must
it be done unto him.  And therefore man's faith, and working will, was
his divine power of living superior to, and independent of all the stars
and elements of this world, in his own angelic perfection of a divine
life.

[Way-2-117] For if the revival of faith, in so small a degree, as to be
compared to a grain of mustard seed, could bring forth in man such a
divine power over all the things of this world, is it not a sufficient
proof of the high power of his first lost faith; which only thus coming
again, as the smallest of seeds, yet comes with such mighty power over
all outward nature, the flesh and the devil?  And thus, all that is said
in the gospel, of the power of faith, is, in the strictest truth, so
much said of the power and perfection of our first father, over whom
this earthly system had no power: but whether he stood, or fell, or was
to rise again, all was, and is, and must be done, by his faith, or the
working of his will.

[Way-2-118] And thus also, you see, that all that was said of the nature
and extent of the magic power of the will, is not only conformable to,
but is the very spirit of the gospel, and all the written word of God.
For from the first promise made to Adam, to the last written words of
scripture, man is only called and directed to the true exercise of these
magic, generating powers of the will; namely, to believe, to hope, to
trust in God; to love, desire, and expect the renewal of a divine life
from the goodness of God.

[Way-2-119] Humanus.  Give me leave only to add, that in these words of
our savior, "According to thy faith, so be it done unto thee," and other
such-like sayings, he has not only opened the true nature and power of
faith, but has discovered more of the true philosophy of nature, than
ever was told the world before.  Faith is generally considered as a
speculative thing, as an assent of the mind to the credibility of things
related.  This may sometimes, as well in the scriptures, as in other
books, be called faith, as the same word may be used in various senses.
But the faith in question, about which our savior speaks, and to which
he ascribes so much power, and which alone can do a man any real good or
harm, is quite of another nature: I say, good or harm; because all that
is good or bad proceeds from it, and it carries its power which way it
will: as it can work all wonders, and overcome the world, so it alone
has power over life and heaven in the soul, can drive them out, and set
up the kingdom of hell and death instead of them.

[Way-2-120] Now this faith may be thus understood; it is that power by
which a man gives himself up to anything, seeks, wills, adheres to, and
unites with it, so that his life lives in it and belongs to it.  Now to
whatever the soul gives itself up; whatever it hungereth after; and in
which it delights, and seeks to be united there, and there only, is its
faith; that faith which can work either life or death, and according to
which faith everything is, and must be done to man.

[Way-2-121] Now this faith is not a matter of choice, so that a man may
live without it, if he pleases; but is essential to his life, and
altogether inseparable from it.  For whatever the life drives at, to
whatever it is given up, there is its living and powerful faith.
Therefore, be a man given up to what he will, seeking, delighting, and
acquiescing in whatever it be, temporal or eternal, whether it be
Christianity, idolatry, Deism, or atheism; this is a certain conclusion,
that every man in the world is a man of faith, lives by faith, and that
equally so; because every man's life is equally given up to the seeking,
and delighting in, and uniting itself to, something or other; and
therefore every man equally lives by faith, and that in its highest
degree.  It matters not, whether a man delights and acquiesces in the
philosophy of Epicurus, or Spinoza; whether he be given up to luxury and
sensuality, or to syllogisms and definitions, to mysteries of
redemption, or mysteries of atheism: he is neither more nor less a man
of faith for all this; but is equally under the power of faith, whether
it be divine, earthly, sensual, or devilish.  For which way soever the
life of man tends, or drives; to whatever he gives up himself; there he
is, and lives by faith, and that in its highest degree; for no faith can
rise higher than this.  Nor can a man's faith be anywhere, but where his
life is, and to which it belongs; nor can he be said to live to
anything, but by faith.  For faith is as much the one working power of
life, as thought is the one working power of understanding; and the
understanding of man may as easily proceed without being led by thought,
as the life of man go on without being led by faith; that is, without
giving itself up to something, or other, with which it would be united,
and to which it would belong, as its desired good; which, as I said
before, is the highest degree of the most living faith.

[Way-2-122] The debate therefore, set up by the Deists, about reason and
faith, as two principles of life; the one appropriated to Christians,
and the other to themselves, is founded on the grossest ignorance of
both their natures; as great as that of supposing, that there are two
principles of seeing and smelling; viz., reason and the senses.  And the
Deist, who turns from all faith, to have a life of reason, proceeds as
much according to nature, as if he was to leave it to Christians, to see
and smell by their senses; but himself and brethren to see and smell by
the power of reason.  For reason is no more the power of life, than it
is the power of the senses; but must stand below them both, and follow
them both, in the same degree of inability to alter, increase, or lessen
the natural power of either of them, as the eye hath to alter the
vegetation, or color, or smell, of the plant on which it looks.  For
reason like the eye, is only an outward looker on; and can no more form,
or model, or alter the life of the soul, than it can alter the life and
vegetation of the body.  But this saying, "According to thy faith, so be
it done unto thee," contains the unchangeable ground, and true
philosophy of life, and the power of life.  And this saying takes in
every individual of human nature and the Deist may as well think of
turning death over to the Christians, and reserving immortality for
himself, as to think of being anything else, either here or hereafter,
but purely and solely that, which his faith has brought to pass in him.
He may, indeed, easily enough keep himself free from all Christian
faith; but, whether he will or no, a faith must do all in him, and for
him, just in the same degree, as it does for the Christian.  Let him
make ever so many declarations against the superstition and blindness of
faith; ever so many encomiums upon the beauty of axioms, syllogisms, and
deductions of reason; his life is just as far from being a life of
reason, as the Christian's is, who declares only for a life of faith.
For as the eye and the nose have just the same nature, office, and
power; and he cannot, as such, have either more or less from them, or be
more or less helped by them; so reason and faith have just the same
nature, office and power, in a man, and are always in him, and will
always do the same for him, whether he be Christian or Deist.  And was
the Deist to change sides, he would be neither more nor less a man of
faith and reason, than he was before; nor have got or lost any power
either of faith or reason.  He would only be under a divine, instead of
an earthly and sensual faith; and his reason would not have changed its
state, or office, or power, but only be the servant of a better master;
that is, of a divine faith.

[Way-2-123] Now, was not faith the power of life in every man, no man
could live by faith, nor could it be the principle or power of life in
any man.  But seeing every man, whether earthly or heavenly, is that
which he is, by faith; and faith will and must have its work in every
man; and he cannot live without it, or free from it; hence is the
absolute necessity of the one right faith, in order to salvation, and
the impossibility of anything else to avail in the stead of it.  Thence
also it is, that Christianity applies not to the reason of any man,
because reason is not the principle of life, or the former of it; but it
calls the heart to a right faith, because man is only lost and separate
from God and heaven by his faith in the things and powers of this world.
And therefore all salvation does, and only can, arise from a faith
turned to God; and also all damnation from faith in the things of this
world.  And no man can turn either to God, or to this world, but by
faith; that is, by giving up himself either to the one, or the other;
which is the highest act or power of faith.  For there is nothing that
works either to life or death, in any man, but that to which he is given
up, by faith in it.  And reason never had, nor ever can have, or do,
anything else, but one and the same underwork, or office, let faith take
which way it will.

[Way-2-124] The delusion of the Deist lies here: he refuses an assent to
the history of facts and doctrines of the gospel; and this is his proof
to himself, that he lives by reason, and that it is the real principle
of his life.  On the other hand, he that assents to the history of facts
and doctrines of the gospel, is, by the Deist, reckoned to be a man of
gospel faith, and that lives by it.  But this is all mistake on both
sides.  For this assent on one side, and dissent on the other, touches
not the matter either of reason or faith.  For both these persons,
notwithstanding this difference of assenting, may not only be equally
governed by faith; but have strictly one and the same faith.  For if the
things of this world have the heart of both of them, which very easily
may be; then they have but one and the same faith, and are equally
governed by it; for they both equally live by a faith in this world.

[Way-2-125] The Deist therefore hath no other possible way of showing,
that he is not as much a man of faith, as any Christian can be, but by
showing, that he has no will, no desire, no inclination of heart left in
him; that his life drives no way, is given up to no one thing, as its
end and good; but that reason, without affection, carries him only from
syllogism to syllogism, in quest of nothing.  Then it is, that he may
deem himself to be a man of reason, but not till then; for if he has any
heart that hath any inclination to be united with, or belong to
anything; then he becomes a man of faith, and he lives by faith in that
to which he is given up, as much as any Christian does, who is given up
to the mysteries of Christian redemption.

[Way-2-126] I could not help saying thus much on this delusion, in which
I have been so long ensnared myself, and therefore have the utmost good
will and earnestness to help others out of it.  And, to this end, I
shall add the following passages, taken from a book, where this whole
matter is justly said to be examined to the bottom.  "We have no want of
religion, but so far as we want to better our state in God; or so far as
we are unpossessed of God, or less possessed of him than we might be,
and our nature requires.  This is the true and only ground of religion;
viz., to alter our state of existence in God, and to have more of the
divine nature and perfections communicated to us.  Nothing therefore is
our good in religion, but that which alters our state of existence in
God for the better, and puts us in possession of something of God; or
makes us partakers of the divine nature in such a manner and degree, as
we wanted it.  Everything that is in life, has its degree of life in and
from God; it lives and moves and has its being in God.  This is as true
of devils, as of the highest and most perfect angels.  Therefore, all
the happiness or misery of all creatures consists only in this; viz., as
they are more or less possessed of God, or as they differently partake
of the divine nature, or according to their different state of
excellence in God.  But if this be a truth (and who can deny it?)  then
we have the certainty of demonstration, that nothing can be our good in
religion, but that which communicates to us something of God, or the
divine nature, or that which betters our state and manner of existence
in God.

[Way-2-127] "For if devils are what they are, because of their state and
manner of existence in God; if blessed angels are what they are, because
of their state, and manner of existence in God; then it undeniably
follows, that all that is betwixt angels and devils, all beings, from
the happiness of the one, to the misery of the other, must and can have
no other happiness or misery, but according to their state and manner of
existence in God, or according as they have more or less of the state of
angels, or the state of devils, in them.  Therefore nothing can be our
good in religion, but that which alters our state and manner of
existence in God, and renders us possessed of him in a different and
better manner.

[Way-2-128] "Now, if you was to send to the fallen spirits of darkness
all the systems of your religion of reason, that have been published, to
let them know that they have the power of their own restoration and
happiness within themselves; that they need seek to nothing, but their
own natural reason and understanding, and the strength and activity of
their own powers, to raise them to all the happiness they are capable
of; such a religion would be so far from altering or mending their state
of existence in God, or doing them any good, that it would add strength
to all their chains; and the more firmly they believed and relied upon
it, the more would they be confirmed and fixed in their separation from
God.  And yet, a religion that must necessarily keep them in hell, is
the only religion, that you have to carry you to heaven.  May God
deliver you from this error!

[Way-2-129] "Hence it sufficiently appears, that your way of natural
religion cannot be the way of salvation; because the want of salvation
is nothing else, but the wanting to have our state and manner of
existence in God altered for the better, or to have something of God
communicated to us, which we want, and are capable of receiving.  But if
this is, and must be, the nature of salvation; then no religion can save
us, or do us our proper good, or supply our proper want, but that which
has power to alter our state of existence in God, or to communicate to
us that of God, which we want, and are capable of.  And therefore,
nothing but that same power of God, which created us, which gave us our
state and manner of existence in God, and communicated to us that which
we possess in him, can redeem us, or help us to that state and manner of
existence in him, which we have lost, and are in want of.

[Way-2-130] "There never could have been any dispute about the
possibility of saving ourselves by our own natural faculties, had not
men lost all true knowledge both of God and themselves.  For this
dispute cannot happen, till men suppose God to be some outward being;
that our relation to him is some outward relation; that religion is an
outward thing, that passes between God and us, like terms of behavior
between man and man; that sin hurts, and separates us from God, only as
a misdemeanor hurts, and separates us from our prince; that an offended
God either gives or refuses pardon to us, as an angry prince does to his
subjects; and that, what he gives or forgives to us, is something as
distinct or different from himself, as when a prince, sitting upon his
throne, gives or forgives something to an offender, that is an hundred
miles from him.

[Way-2-131] "Now all this is the same total ignorance of God, what he is
in himself, and what he is in relation to us, and the manner of his
being our good, as when the old idolators took men to be gods.  And yet
nothing is more plain, than that your religion of reason is wholly
founded upon all these gross and false notions of God.  You have not an
argument in its defense, but what supposes, that our relation to God is
an outward relation, like that of subjects to their prince; and that
what we do to and for God, as our service to him, is, and must be done,
by our own power, as that which we do to and for our prince, must be
done by our own power.  And from these errors it is, that you draw this
false conclusion, that if our own reason and natural power were not
sufficient to obtain for us all that we want, and God requires of us;
God must be less good than a good earthly prince, who requires no more
of us, than that which we have a natural strength to do, or can do by
our own power.  And yet all this is pure absurdity, and has all the
grounds of idolatry in it, as soon as you know, that God is no outward
or separate being; but that we are what we are, have what we have, and
do that which we can do, because he has brought us to this state of
life, power, and existence in himself; because he has made us, so far as
we are made, partakers or possessors of a life in him, and has
communicated to us, such a life in himself; or in the words of
scripture, because 'in him we live and move and have our being,' and
consequently have no life, motion, or being, out of him.  For from this
state of our existence in God, it necessarily follows; first, that by
the nature of our creation, we are only put into a capacity of receiving
good.  A creature, as such, can be in no other state; it is as
impossible for him to enrich himself, or communicate more good to
himself, as it was to create himself.  Secondly, that nothing but God
can do us any good.  Thirdly, that God himself cannot do us any good,
but by the communication of himself, in some manner, to us.  Hence it is
plain, that your religion of reason, which supposes, that we have
natural powers, that can put us in possession of that which we want to
be possessed of in God; or, that we need no more divine assistance to
recover what we have lost of God, than to obtain a pardon from a prince;
or, that God need communicate no more of himself to us in our
reconcilement to him, than a prince communicates of himself to his
pardoned subject; has all the mistakes, error, and ignorance of God,
that is in idolatry, when it takes God to be something that he is not;
and has all the false devotion that is in idolatry, when it puts the
same trust in, and expects the same benefit from, its own powers and
faculties, which idolators did in and from their idols.  Your religion
of reason, therefore, which you esteem as the modern refinement of the
human mind, and more excellent and rational, than the faith and humility
of the gospel, has all the dregs of the grossest heathen idolatry in it;
and has changed nothing in idolatry, but the idol; and only differs in
such a degree of philosophy, as the religion of worshiping the sun
differs from the religion of worshiping an onion.

[Way-2-132] "For as soon as it is known and confessed, that God is all
in all; that in him we live and move and have our being; that we have
nothing separately, or at a distance, from him, but everything in him;
that we have no degree of being, nor any degree of good, but in him;
that the almighty can give us nothing, but that which is something of
himself; nor any degree of amendment or salvation, but in such degree as
he communicates something more of himself to us; as soon as this great
immutable truth is known, then it is known with the utmost certainty,
that to put our trust in the sun, or an onion, or our own reason, if not
equally absurd, is yet equally idolatrous, and equally prejudicial to
our salvation."* {*A Demonstration of the gross and fundamental Errors
of a late Book, entitled, A Plain Account of the Sacrament, &c.  p.
161, &c.  &c.}

[Way-2-133] And now, Theophilus, if you please, you may proceed in the
matter you was upon.

[Way-2-134] Theophilus.  We have discoursed long enough for this time.
Let silence, recollection, inward and outward retirement, have their
work for a few days.  They purify the heart; they weaken and disarm
self; they strengthen the spirit of prayer, and help us not only to
pray, but to find, to love, and live in God.  Let us all desire such an
interval as this; and then we shall be fitter to meet again for our
mutual benefit.  My friends, adieu.

The End of the Second Dialogue

The Way to Divine Knowledge--continued

The Third Dialogue

[Way-3-1] Academicus.  If you please, Theophilus, pray go on, just where
you left off at our last meeting.  For this mystery seems to be at
daybreak with me; and the approach of its light leaves me no power to be
content without it.

[Way-3-2] Theophilus.  You have seen, that all nature begins and stands
in a magic birth; and is only a large display of its working power in
every kind of creature.  You now want to see farther into this mystery,
how eternal nature begins; and how God, the first, hidden, imperceptible
cause of all after-things, manifests himself in the properties of a
visible and working nature.  Now I would, to the best of my power,
gladly assist you in this matter, if I could find out a way of doing it,
by opening in your heart a knowledge of God, of nature, and yourself,
without helping you to a mere opinion, or increasing your thirst after
ideal speculation.  Tell me, therefore, what you propose by the
gratification of this desire; or what effect you expect from such
knowledge, as you here seek.

[Way-3-3] Academicus.  All that I desire by it is, to strengthen and
confirm the ground on which I stand; that, seeing the true philosophy of
religion, I may have nothing to fear from all that variety of attacks
which now, more than ever, are made upon it by infidel reason.  I hope,
therefore, it is no vain curiosity, to desire to enter into the depth of
this mystery, since I only desire thereby strength to resist all the
enemies of religion.

[Way-3-4] Theophilus.  All this is right, and very well; provided you do
but know who, and what, are the great and powerful enemies of religion.
But this, perhaps, you do not so well apprehend, as you may imagine.
Your own reason, born, and bred, and governed, by your own flesh and
blood, is the most powerful enemy of religion that you have to do with,
and whom you have the most to fear from.

[Way-3-5] The men of speculative reason, whom you seem most to
apprehend, are powerless enemies, that cannot strike at your religion
with the strength of a straw.  Did you but rightly see what their power
is, you would see it as ridiculous, as that of a few water-engines
trying to quench the fiery globe of the sun: for reason stands in the
same inability to touch the truth of religion, as the water-engine to
affect the sun.  Nay, its inability is much greater; for could the
water, thrown from the engine, be made to reach the sun, it would have
some, though an insignificant, effect upon it; but reason can no more
affect the truth of religion, than nothing can affect something.  If
reason seems to have any power against religion, it is only where
religion is become a dead form, has lost its true state, and is dwindled
into opinion; and when this is the case, that religion stands only as a
well-grounded opinion, then indeed it is always liable to be shaken;
either by having its own credibility lessened, or that of a contrary
opinion increased.  But when religion is that which it should be, not a
notion or opinion, but a real life growing up in God, then reason has
just as much power to stop its course, as the barking dog to stop the
course of the moon.  For true and genuine religion is nature, is life,
and the working of life; and therefore, wherever it is, reason has no
more power over it, than over the roots that grow secretly in the earth,
or the life that is working in the highest heavens.  If therefore you
are afraid of reason hurting your religion, it is a sign, that your
religion is not yet as it should be, is not a self-evident growth of
nature and life within you, but has much of mere opinion in it.

[Way-3-6] Observe the word "self-evident"; for there lies the truth of
the matter; for you have no more of the truth of religion than what is
self-evident in you.  A blind man may be rich in notions and opinions
about the nature, power, and good, of light; and in this case, one blind
man may perplex another, and unsettle his notions; but when the light
manifesteth itself, and is become self-evident, then he is at once
delivered from all uncertainty about it.  Now religion is light and
life; but light and life can only manifest themselves, and can nowhere
be known, but where they are self-evident.

[Way-3-7] You can know nothing of God, of nature, of heaven, or hell, or
yourself, but so far as all these things are self-evident in you.
Neither could any of these things be of any concern to you, but because
they can all of them be self-evident in you.  For the bare history, or
hearsay of any one thing, signifies no more to you, than the hearsay of
any other thing.  And if God and heaven, hell and the devil, the world
and the flesh, were not all of them self-evident in you, you could have
no more good or hurt from any hearsay about them, than from the hearsay
of pleasant gardens, and dismal prisons, in the world of the moon.

[Way-3-8] Let it be supposed, that your ingenious reason should suggest
to you, that there are no devils or hell, and therefore no occasion to
believe that revelation that gives an account of them: in this case, do
but turn to that which is sensible and self-evident in you, and then you
must know, in the same certainty as you know yourself to be alive, that
there is wrath, self-torment, envy, malice, evil-will, pride, cruelty,
revenge, &c.  Now say, if you please, there are no other devils but
these, and that men have no other devils to resist; and then you will
have said truth enough, have owned devils enough, and enough confessed,
that you are in the midst of them; that you are everywhere tempted by
them; and that flesh and blood is too weak to resist them, and therefore
wants some kind of savior, of so contrary a nature, as has power to
destroy these works of the devil in you.

[Way-3-9] Now this is the only knowledge that you can possibly have of
an outward hell, and outward devils; and this knowledge is as self-
evident in you as your own thoughts, and is as near to you as your own
life.  But to see and know an outward hell, or outward devils, that are
outward living creatures, can never be your own case, till all that is
divine and human in you is extinguished; and then you will have
knowledge enough, how hell is a place, and how the devils of rage,
wrath, envy, and pride &c., are living creatures.

[Way-3-10] Again, let it be supposed, that your sceptic reason had
brought you into doubt about the being and providence of God in you: you
have no occasion to consult the demonstrations which heathen
philosophers, school divines, Deists, or atheists, have produced about
it, from the existence of things; all concluding, as well Christians, as
Deists and atheists, that there must be some eternal first cause from
which all has proceeded.

[Way-3-11] For what a God is this, that is only proved to be, because
something now is, and therefore something must always have been, an
infinite, eternal something, with infinite power to bring forth all that
is come into being?  What a God, I say, is this, which the Arian, the
Deist, and the atheist, is as willing to own as the Christian; and which
is as serviceable to the cause of Arianism, Deism, idolatry, and
atheism, as it is to Christianity?  For the atheist has his omnipotent,
eternal, first cause, as well as all the disputers for a God.

[Way-3-12] But now, if you turn from all these idle debates and
demonstrations of reason, to that which is sensible and self-evident in
you, then you have a sensible, self-evident proof of the true God of
life, and light, and love, and goodness, as manifest to you as your own
life.  For with the same self-evident certainty, as you know that you
think, and are alive, you know that there is goodness, love,
benevolence, meekness, compassion, wisdom, peace, joy, &c.  Now this is
the self-evident God, that forces himself to be known, and found, and
felt, in every man, in the same certainty of self-evidence, as every man
feels and finds his own thoughts and life.  And this is the God, whose
being and providence, thus self-evident in us, calls for our worship,
and love, and adoration, and obedience to him: and this worship, and
love, and adoration, and conformity to the divine goodness, is our true
belief in, and sure knowledge of, the self-evident God.  And atheism is
not the denial of a first omnipotent cause, but is purely and solely
nothing else but the disowning, forsaking, and renouncing the goodness,
virtue, benevolence, meekness, &c.  of the divine nature, that has made
itself thus self-evident in us, as the true object of our worship,
conformity, love, and adoration.  This is the one true God, or the Deity
of goodness, virtue, and love, &c.  the certainty of whose being and
providence opens itself to you in the self-evident sensibility of your
own nature; and inspires his likeness, and love of his goodness, into
you.  And as this is the only true knowledge that you can possibly have
of God and the divine nature, so it is a knowledge not to be debated or
lessened by any objections of reason, but is as self-evident as your own
life.  But to find or know God in reality, by any outward proofs, or by
anything but by God himself made manifest and self-evident in you, will
never be your case either here or hereafter.  For neither God, nor
heaven, nor hell, nor the devil, nor the world, and the flesh, can be
any otherwise knowable in you, or by you, but by their own existence and
manifestation in you.  And all pretended knowledge of any of these
things, beyond or without this self-evident sensibility of their birth
within you, is only such knowledge of them, as the blind man hath of
that light, that never entered into him.

[Way-3-13] And as this is our only true knowledge, so every man is, by
his birth and nature, brought into a certain and self-evident
sensibility of all these things.  And if we bring ourselves by reasoning
and dispute into an uncertainty about them, it is an uncertainty that we
have created for ourselves, and comes not from God and nature.  For God
and nature have made that which is our greatest concern, to be our
greatest certainty; and to be known by us in the same self-evidence, as
our own pain or pleasure is.  For nothing is religion, or the truth of
religion, nothing is good or bad to you, but that which is a self-
evident birth within you.  So that if you call that only God, and
religion, and goodness, which truly are so, and can only be known by
their self-evident powers and life in you, then you are in the truth,
and the truth will make you free from all doubts; and you will no more
fear or regard anything that talkative reason can discourse against it,
than against your own seeing, hearing, or sensible life.  But if you
turn from self-evidence to reason and opinion, you turn from the tree of
life, and you give yourself up to certain delusion.

[Way-3-14] Wonder not therefore, my friend, that though the mystery
under consideration contains the greatest truths, yet I am unwilling to
help you to reason and speculate upon it; for if you attempt to go
farther in it than self-evidence leads you, you only go so far out of
it, or from it.  For the end of this mystery is not to furnish new or
better matter for reason and opinion, but to bring man home to that
sensibility, which is self-evident in himself, and to lead him only by
self-evident principles, to see, and find, and feel the difference
between true and false religion in the same degree of self-evident
certainty, as he sees and feels the difference between fire and water.
This, I say, is the great intent of this mystery, to bring man into a
sensibility of God and nature, to know and feel, that good and evil,
life and death, are a self-evident growth and birth of nature in man,
according as his will enters into and works with that which is
unchangeably good, or unchangeably evil, in the working of nature.  Now
as the workings of nature are unchangeable in their effects, and that
which is naturally good or evil, must always be so; and seeing man's
life standeth in nature, and must work with it, must have only that good
or evil which is unchangeable in nature; and seeing his state in nature,
whether good or evil, is, and can be, only that, which the sensible,
self-evident powers of his own life manifest to him; then you see the
fitness and necessity of your keeping steadily to that, which is self-
evident in you, as the very tree of life, the criterion of all that
truth and goodness that belongs to you.  Secondly, you see with what
good reason Jacob Behmen so often tells you, that all that he has
written, was only to help man to seek and find himself, to see and know
his place and state in nature, and how to cooperate with God and nature
in generating a birth of heaven within himself.  Thirdly, you may see
how you and I should abase this blessed mystery, should we, instead of
only and truly seeking and finding its birth within us, make it a matter
of reasoning and opinion.

[Way-3-15] Academicus.  I have neither power nor inclination to object
to anything that you have said.  But still I must desire you to assist
me in your own way, and such as you judge to be suitable to the
intention of this mystery.  I plainly see, that the whole ground of
religion lies in the knowledge of what God is in himself, as distinct
from nature; what nature is in itself; what I have from God, and what I
am in and from nature; and how I am to work with it, as God himself is
and worketh in nature.  For if this knowledge can be opened in me, then
the why, and the how, of every mystery of redemption must be seen to the
bottom.

[Way-3-16] Theophilus.  By nature are meant, all the working, stirring
properties of life, or all the various sensibilities which life is
capable of finding and feeling in itself.  And therefore you need only
look at the working sensibilities of your own life, the several kinds
and ways of feeling and finding your own state, to know by a self-
evident certainty, what nature is in itself.  And thus also, in the same
self-evident certainty, you may know, that nature is not God.  For as
you find, that nature is opened in you; that all its properties have
their existence in you; and yet that none of these properties of life
are their own happiness, or can make themselves to be happy, full of
peace, delight, and joy, and free from every want; so you have a full
self-evident proof, that God is not nature, but entirely distinct from,
and superior to, nature; and that, as considered in himself, he is that
which alone can make nature happy, free from want, and full of all
delightful satisfaction.  And thus you know, not from hearsay, but from
a self-evident certainty in yourself, that God, considered as in
himself, is the happiness, the rest, the satisfaction, the joy, the
fulfilling of all the properties and sensibilities of nature; and also
that nature, in itself, is that working life of various properties and
sensibilities, which want to be made happy, which reach after something
that they are not, and have not, and which cannot be happy or fulfilled,
till something of an higher nature than themselves be united with them;
that is, the working of nature must be in want, in pain, and
dissatisfaction, till God (the blessing and fulfilling of nature) is
manifested, found, and enjoyed in it.

[Way-3-17] Now suppose you knew no more of what God is in himself,
distinct from nature, and what nature is as thus distinguished from God,
than is already opened in you, you would know enough to be a key to all
that which Jacob Behmen speaks of God, and of nature; and enough also to
show you how to cooperate with God and nature, in bringing forth a new
birth of the divine life within you.  For as soon as you know, that
nature in itself is only a working life of various sensibilities, which
wants something distinct from itself, and higher than itself, to make it
happy, then you have a self-evident certainty of these following truths:
first, that God, considered as in himself, is the blessing, the
satisfaction, the heaven, and happiness, of all and every sensibility of
nature.  Secondly, that therefore, as the gospel teaches, only the Word,
the light, the Son of God, or Jesus Christ, can redeem fallen nature,
restore it to its first state of blessedness in God.  Thirdly, that
therefore, as the gospel teaches, you have but one thing to do, and that
one thing absolutely necessary to be done; viz., to deny yourself; that
is, to turn this fallen nature from itself, from all its own wills and
workings in the vanity of this life, to give up itself in faith, in
hunger and thirst after that light, Word, Son, or Jesus Christ of God,
who is the fullness, the satisfaction, the joy, and blessedness, of all
nature; who alone can turn every working and sensibility of nature in a
participation of heavenly satisfaction and joy.  Now what can you
desire, or need you to know of God, of nature, and the mystery of
Christian redemption, more than this?  And yet all this is a self-
evident knowledge, born within you as soon as you turn to it.

[Way-3-18] Academicus.  Oh!  Sir, you quite transport me with this
short, easy, and yet full explication of so great a matter, which has
often perplexed me.  But now I shall never be at a loss how to
understand the distinction between God and nature, and also the absolute
necessity of it; which, when rightly known, sets all the doctrines and
mysteries of Christian redemption upon such a ground as cannot be
removed.  But still I must beg of you to help me to the same self-
evidence of the birth and generation of the properties of nature, as
they are set forth by Jacob Behmen, especially of the three first forms,
which I perceive to be the ground of all; and yet their birth and
generation, their union with, and distinction from, one another, I do
not enough comprehend, as he sets them forth.  Thus, the first form of
nature is said to be desire; which is the ground and foundation of all
things.  This desire (the first property), he saith, is astringing,
drawing, shutting up, compressing, hardening, &c.  Now all this is
evident enough; for I have a sufficient sensibility, that this is the
nature of desire; that, in its spiritual way, it attracts, draws,
compresses, and would shut up, or enclose, &c.  But then, it is
immediately said, that the second property is attraction, drawing,
sting, and motion, &c.  Now if the first is attraction and drawing, how
can the second be different from it, and yet be attraction and drawing?

[Way-3-19] Theophilus.  The desire is not one property, but is in itself
all the properties of nature; it is the ground in which they all dwell,
and the mother out of which they are all born: so that all that is said
of the three first forms of nature, is only so much said of three forms
or properties of the desire.  For the desire is not the first property
of nature; but every property hath all that it hath in and from the
desire.  The first property of the desire, of that which is the
peculiarity of its nature, as distinguished from the second, is, to
compress, enclose, shut up, &c., whence cometh thickness, darkness,
hardness, &c.  But no sooner does the desire begin to compress, shut up,
but it brings forth its own greatest enemy, and the highest resistance
to itself: for it cannot compress or thicken, but by drawing or
attracting; but drawing and attracting is quite contrary to shutting up,
or compressing; because drawing or attracting is motion, and every
motion is contrary to shutting up or compressing together.

[Way-3-20] And thus your difficulty is removed: attraction or drawing is
rightly ascribed to the desire, and rightly called its second property,
because it is born of it; and yet is directly contrary to that which is
the desire's first property or intention; viz., to compress, to hold in
stillness, &c.

[Way-3-21] Now as these two properties are two resistances, not in two
different things, but are one and the same thing in this contrariety in
and to itself, as they are inseparable, generate each other, are equal
in strength, and can neither of them overcome the other, so as to go one
way, but each of them stops the other in the same manner; and seeing
this desire cannot cease to be these two contrary things; viz.  a
holding-fast, and moving-away, a shutting-in, and a going-out, both in
the same degree of strength; neither able to shut up, or to go out, nor
able to cease from either; these two contrarieties become a whirling
anguish in itself, and so bring forth a third property of nature.  And
in these properties lies the true ground of all sensibility of life, and
also of every created thing.  Matter, motion, darkness, fire, and every
natural power or quality of anything, has its beginning from them.
Considered in themselves, they are the working powers of that great and
strong creaturely life, which cannot be broken, because it begets
itself, and every property is included in, and generates each other.  It
is a band or knot of life, that can never be loosed; nor is capable of
annihilation, because it is a birth of eternal nature, which is as
unchangeable as God himself.  And as it arises from no outward thing,
but is generated in and from itself, its work is eternal, and can never
be made to cease.  For as one property has no power over the other, but
that of forcing it to exist; as one property does not weary the other,
but always gives strength to it; so there can be no cessation of their
working, but they must do, as they do, to all eternity.

[Way-3-22] Now the life of these three properties is a life of three
contrary wills, equally strong and powerful against each other; and
therefore is a life of the highest disquiet, torment, and anguish, full
of the most horrible sensibility.  It is a life that can feel nothing
but its own tearing contrariety, that reigns with it.  And this is the
life of nature separated from God; it is the life of hell, and the
devils; and is that life of dark, raging distraction, which every living
creature must be in, whose first properties of life are not softened and
quieted, either by the light of God, or the light of this world,
dwelling and making peace in them.  And he that will only seek to his
reason, to cool the flame of these raging first properties of life, acts
as wisely as he, whose house being on fire, would only have it
extinguished, by reading a lecture upon the nature of water to it.

[Way-3-23] And now, sir, you have seen plainly enough the birth, nature,
and difference, of these three first properties.  But let it be
supposed, that you have no feeling, or inward sensibility, of these
three properties in the manner they have been here described, according
to Jacob Behmen; yet you have no reason to be troubled at it, or put
your brain upon the rack how to conceive it, or fear that you must want
the benefit of this knowledge, till you have it as above described; for
you have in yourself a most self-evident proof, that the thing is really
so; and that desire hath all that in it which he so deeply declares,
from its first seed, or root.

[Way-3-24] For it is a thing self-evident to you, that every desire, as
such, is in itself a restless torment; that it has pain, disquiet, and
anguish, in itself; and, as to itself, consists of nothing else.  Now,
whether you can, with Jacob Behmen, divide this restless, anguishing
desire into its three essential parts, of which it consists, matters
not, as to the reality of the thing itself; for you have sensibility
enough, that the desire is made up of pain and anguish, till the thing
desired is obtained: and therefore you have all the certainty and
benefit of this knowledge; and it serves the same end, as if you knew
the ground of it with the same exactness as he has set it forth.

[Way-3-25] You have yourself for a proof, that desire and pain begin
together; and this is a full proof of what was said; viz.  that desire
begins with two properties, that resist and strive against one another.
Again, you have the same evidence in yourself, that the desire, left to
itself, that is, without the least glimpse of any possibility of having
that which it desires, is a degree of hell, and quite intolerable to
itself: and this is a self-evident proof of what was said; viz.  that
the third and last property of the desire, is that whirling anguish,
brought forth by the two first properties: for these three properties
are the whole of the desire; it has nothing more in it.  And when your
desire cannot cease, and yet has nothing but itself, without the least
mixture or feeling of hope in it, then you have a full self-evidence of
all that which the desire is, in its three essential, inseparable
properties, and that strictly according to the letter of Jacob Behmen.

[Way-3-26] Now all that is nature, or natural life within you, is only
the working of desire in this painful state; and that which can set this
painful life at rest in you, is so much of God, or the divine nature,
manifested in you, and changing your restless properties of life into
peace and happiness.  And as the working properties of desire are your
natural life, so the same working properties are the life of eternal
nature; from whence, as out of the womb, your natural life is brought
forth, and hath neither more nor less in it than that which is in
eternal nature.

[Way-3-27] And if the working properties, which constitute the life of
eternal nature, could be supposed to be without God in them, eternal
nature would be a mere eternal hell: But as the eternal desire, with all
its working properties, is brought forth by the magic power of the
divine will, only for this end, that the holy Deity may manifest a
heaven of glory in them; so eternal nature always was, and always must
be, a kingdom of heaven, or the unchangeable manifestation of the
invisible God in an outward sensibility of life, happiness, glory, and
majesty.

[Way-3-28] Academicus.  I am fully satisfied as to this point; and all
that you have said, has the evidence of light at noonday.  And I hope
you will now go on in the birth of the four remaining properties; and
show me, in the same degree of evidence, how these three properties
bring forth the four following ones, which turn nature into a kingdom of
heaven.

[Way-3-29] Theophilus.  These three properties of nature cannot bring
forth the four following ones.  They can bring forth nothing but
themselves to all eternity, nor can ever be anything else in themselves,
but what they were at first.  Nature can rise no higher than this
painful state; and its painful working contrariety must always be the
ground of all life, and all sensibility of life.  For if (1.)  this
shutting-up, or compressing; and (2.)  this resistance to it; and (3.)
this whirling arising from both, was ever to cease, there life, and all
sensibility, must cease with them; and therefore these three properties
must always do as they do, as the only possible ground of every kind and
degree of creaturely life, both in heaven, and on earth.

[Way-3-30] But if life is to be happy, something else must come into
them, not to destroy their natural working, but to make every
contrariety in them a strife of joy, and delightful sensibilities.
Thus, (1.)  compressing, or shutting-up, must find itself only to
compress and keep in light and love; (2.)  the attraction or drawing-
motion, must find itself to be the drawing and motion of love; and, (3.)
the whirling anguish must whirl still, but as a transport of joy
unavoidably brought forth from the strife of love in the two properties
of which it is born.  And thus nature remains in its full strength; it
compresses, it attracts, and it whirls, as it did at first; and nothing
is lost, or taken from it, but its hatred, wrath, and misery.  Now here
you are to observe, that every thing or creature, either in heaven,
hell, or this world, hath its substance, or all that is substantiality
in it, solely from these three first properties of nature.  The
creaturely substance of an angel, a devil, or a dead flint, all stand in
these three first forms of nature.  And all the difference betwixt high
and low, spiritual and material, in the creatures, arises from their
different participation of the four following forms of nature.  But the
four following forms cannot exist, or manifest themselves, but in the
three first; and therefore the three first are, and must be, as well in
the highest as in the lowest of creatures: they are the first something,
or substantiality of nature, in which the light, and love, and Spirit of
God could manifest itself; for spirit cannot work without something to
work in and upon, and in which it may be found; nor could light shine,
unless there was something in nature thicker than itself, to receive and
reflect it: and therefore, thickness or darkness is, and must be, as
eternal as the visible or shining light.  Darkness is so far from being
a mere negation, or only an absence, of the light, that it is the first
and only substance, and the ground of all the possible substantiality in
nature, and the substantial manifester of light itself, which could have
no visibility, shine, or color, but in and through, and by the
substantiality of darkness or thickness.  This darkness, thickness, or
substantiality, is not co-existent with, or independent of, God, but is
the compressing, astringing, thickening work of the first property of
the desire; which desire comes eternally from God, only as a magic birth
from the will of the Deity, which willeth to come out of its hiddenness
into an outward visibility of a working life.  And therefore the desire
is the beginning of nature; it compresseth and thickeneth.  But what
does it compress and thicken?  Why, nothing but itself; viz.  its own
three properties.  And these three properties thus brought forth, tied
and bound in one another, are, from eternity to eternity, all the
substantiality and thickness, that is or ever can be in nature, or any
creature, from the highest to the lowest.  And they are thus brought
forth in this indissolvable band in and by the desire, that the
invisible light and life of the hidden Deity may have its something to
move and shine in; his hidden Spirit have something to work and manifest
itself in; his hidden love have something into which it may give itself;
and his hidden life have something in which it can open itself in a
variety of births of life.  And this something is the working
compressing desire, which includes itself, (1.)  a continual thickening,
which is darkness and substantiality: (2.)  motion or resistance to this
thickening, which is the ground of all sensibility; and, (3.)  a
restless state of whirling from these two properties, which is the very
nature and power of life.  And thus these three properties of the
desire, are that sufficient something, in which the Deity, by entering
into it, can manifest his hidden power in all the substances and working
properties of nature, by turning them all in their different workings
into an endless variety of delightful forms and sensibilities of the
creaturely life.

[Way-3-31] Now this first thickness, darkness, or substantiality,
brought forth in the desire, though it is not matter, as matter is seen
and found in this world; yet these two things must be affirmed of it:
first, that it stands in the same place, answers the same ends, and is
distinguished from light and spirit in the eternal world, just as matter
in this world stands distinguished from the light and spirit of this
world.  Secondly, that all the darkness, thickness, and matter of every
kind in this world, is nothing else in itself, but the first thickness,
darkness, and substantiality in the desire, brought down by various
steps into such kinds of materiality as are here to be seen.  Look at
what kind of materiality you will in this world; it is, in its whole
nature, nothing else but the darkness or thickness of the eternal world,
brought into a farther degree of thickness and compression.  And now we
are come to see the true ground; (1.)  how the angels could destroy
their kingdom, or lose all the light and happiness of heaven in it: and,
(2.)  how also, their wasted, spoiled, darkened habitation in the
divided properties of nature, could be turned, and created by God, as it
is, into this new form of a material world.

[Way-3-32] The first three properties of nature were never to have been
seen or known, as they are in themselves, by any creature; their
thickness, strife, and darkness, were brought forth by God, in union
with the light, and glory, and majesty of heaven; and only for that end,
that the holy Deity might be made manifest in them.  And therefore their
own nature, as they are in themselves, without God in them, could only
then be first known, when the angels turned their desire backwards to
search and find the ground and original of life, which could not be
found, till these properties were found, in which the original ground of
life lay hid.  This turning of their desire into the origin of life, was
their whole turning from the light of God; and therefore they found
themselves where they had turned their desire; that is, in the center of
nature; viz.  in the first properties of nature, which is the dark
center, or ground of life, which never should have been known or
manifest to any creature.  For by the center of nature, or the dark
center, you are always to understand these three first properties;
which, when without or separate from the light and goodness of the Deity
in them, are in themselves only the thickness, and rage, and darkness,
of an omnipotent compressing, and omnipotent resistance to it, and
omnipotent whirling from these two omnipotent contrarieties.  I call
them all omnipotent, because they cannot be stopped, but do all that
they would; and though they are contrary to one another, yet each of
them gives strength to the other; so that the omnipotence of the one, is
the omnipotence of the other.  And this is the boundless, incessant,
strong rage, darkness, and strife, of the hellish life, which only is
that, which these three properties of nature, when left to themselves,
can feel or find.  Now the angels, which turned their desire into the
center of nature, fell into the life and working power of these three
properties; they felt nothing else in themselves, but these properties;
they had no other will or power of working, but as these properties
worked; and therefore, as living and active creatures, they could only
live, and act, and cooperate, or unite with that ground of nature
without them, which was the same and one with their own nature; and
therefore, all that they could do, was to stir up, awaken, call forth,
and act with that thickness and darkness, and strife, that was hidden in
nature, just as the toad, in a fine garden, only sucks the poison that
is hid in a good herb.  So the fallen angels, though in heaven, having
only the center of nature in themselves, could only find and work with
that center and root of darkness, on which the heavenly glory stood.
But from this power which they had of working in the center of nature,
hence came forth a dark, wrathful substantiality, separated from the
light and glory of the holy Deity; and thus a new kind of substantiality
appeared in their kingdom; and their outward habitation was like their
inward life; viz.  a manifestation of nature fallen from God.  And here
now, you clearly see, how the first thickness or compression of the
first property of nature, which was only the hidden substantiality of
the light and glory of heaven, came into a more outward state, and made
its first approach or step towards matter, as you now see it.  For there
was now a thickness, a darkness, and hardness, which never had been
before; for the light being lost, then the first property of nature lost
its beatified state of meekness, transparency, and spiritual fluidity;
and became stiff, rigid, dark, and hard; and this, as I said, was its
first step or descent towards the hardness and darkness of the matter of
this world, till it came to be earth and stones, by the creating power
of God.  And thus it came to pass, as Moses speaks, that darkness was
upon the face of the deep.  A state, that had no possibility of
existence, till the sin of angels had manifested the hidden center of
nature, in the working of its three properties, without the light of God
in them.

[Way-3-33] Now as a new thickness of darkness, hardness, or
substantiality, was manifested by the strong working powers of the
angels in the center, or the first properties of fallen nature; so God,
to manifest his wisdom and goodness towards this fallen nature, took all
these properties in their own working way; and made them in their own
way of working, to stop and overcome the evil that was brought forth by
them.  For the will of God, joining with the wrathful astringency of the
first compressing property of nature, became the divine fiat, which
increased this compacting property to such a degree, as created or
compacted the darkened substantiality into a globe of earth and stones.
And this same divine fiat, or creating power, which coagulated the
grossness into earth and stones, compressed or coagulated all that was
substantial, or belonged to substantiality through their whole kingdom,
as well the heavenly as the earthly part of it; so that all their
kingdom, as to its substantiality, lost its spirituality, and entered
into a new created or compacted state of thickness, as well the spoiled
as the unspoiled part of their kingdom.  And as soon as this was done,
the angels lost all their power in it, and over it.  They could kindle
no more wrath in its heavenly part, nor make any use of that which they
had spoiled, because all was shut up together in this new compaction,
with which the spirituality of their nature could have no communication.
And so they were left prisoners in their own chains of darkness, unable
to stir up wrath anywhere but in themselves.  All this was done in the
first day of the creation, when the fiat of God compressed or created
their whole kingdom into a heaven and earth.  Hence it is; viz.  from a
compaction of their whole kingdom into a new-created heaven and earth;
that all things in this world, all its elements and stars, are a mixture
of good and evil, have something of the wrath and evil of hell in them.
Hence is the great variety of metallic ores and precious stones in the
earth; the good and bad qualities in fire, air, and water.  It is
because the divine fiat, or compacting power, came at once in the utmost
swiftness upon their whole kingdom, as the good and evil stood in strife
against each other, and compressed all into a state of cessation and
conjunction with one another, as in the prison of this new-created
materiality.  And thus the heavenly and hellish part of their kingdom,
light and darkness, fluidity and hardness, meekness and wrath, good and
evil, were all shut up together in the same sudden compaction; in which
they lay, as in a state of death, till the divine fiat should awaken a
life in it.

[Way-3-34] Now the three first properties of nature; the first, a
shutting up; the second, a running out; and the third, a whirling; were
by the divine fiat, in the three first days of the creation, become the
ground of an earthly, a watery, and airy materiality, all according to
the working nature of the three properties; and all of them having
something of an heavenly nature shut up in them, which wanted to be
delivered from its bondage.  Hence this threefold materiality of earth,
water, and air, became a subject fit for the birth of the fourth
property of nature.  And therefore, on the fourth day of the creation,
the divine fiat kindled in this anguishing materiality, out of that very
fire and light that was compacted and hid in it, the fourth property of
nature (the eternal fire), as a globe of fire and light, which was to
stand as an out-birth of the eternal fire, in the midst of this new-
created materiality, and become the opener of all the astral life and
light in this world.  And as the eternal fire, the fourth property of
eternal nature, is not a movable thing that can change its place, but
must be always in the place of its birth, standing forever, as a birth,
in the midst of the seven properties, forever changing the three first
properties of nature into the three last properties of the kingdom of
heaven; so the sun, the true out-birth of the eternal fire, and having
the same birth and office in this material world, as the eternal fire
hath in eternal nature, is not, cannot be, a movable thing, or be in any
other place in this world, than where it is; but is, and must be, the
center or heart of this whole system, ever separating the three first
properties of this material world, from the three that follow, and ever
changing the three first forms of material wrath into the three
following forms of terrestrial life, light, and all delightful
sensibilities; in strict conformity to that, which the eternal fire does
in eternal nature, changing the root, or first properties of nature,
into a kingdom of God, and heavenly glory.  For the sun is not a body of
fire brought into the place where it is; but the kindled place is its
body and birth; and therefore it is as immovable as place is, and must
be as it is; viz.  a place giving forth fire and light till all material
nature is dissolved.  The place is kindled, not by any foreign fire, but
thus: in the first compaction of the whole angelic kingdom into this new
materiality, the good and bad part, that is, the spoiled and unspoiled
substantiality of their whole kingdom, was shut up in this new
compression or materiality, in one and the same state of death.
Secondly, in the beginning of the creation, God, said, "Let there be
light," and there was light; not a shining light, for that came first
from the birth of the sun, but a power or virtue of heavenly light, not
yet in a visible, material shine, but as an uncreated power of light,
entering into this whole materiality, to stir up, and awaken the good
part of the heavenly substantiality, that was shut up in the compaction
of this new materiality.

[Way-3-35] Without these two things, material nature must have continued
in its darkness, and no fourth form of fire could ever have come forth
in it.  But from these two things, viz.  the heavenly substantiality,
stirred up by the power of light entering into it, the three first
properties of darkness were brought into a mere anguishing state; from
whence, by the divine fiat, the fourth form of material nature kindled
itself, as a fire, and broke forth in the place of the sun, and must be
ever burning and flaming in the midst of the material system; because it
is born of the three first properties of darkness, and brings forth the
three last properties of light, and life, and the joy of nature; and
therefore must always be in the midst of the six properties of nature,
itself making the number to be seven.  And thus the sun, as the fourth
form of nature, must always stand in the midst of the whole material
system.  And this proved, not as Copernicus proved it, from reasonable
conjectures, and outward arguments, but from the internal nature of its
birth, the first root from which it proceeds, an the absolute
impossibility of its being otherwise.  And thus it is, that the truth
and depth of nature is opened by the Spirit of God, in the mystery made
known to our illiterate shoemaker.  And thus you have a short sketch,
how this world came to be as it is.  It is descended as an out-birth of
the eternal world, and all the seven properties of eternal nature work
in it, as they work in eternity; and the eternity is manifested in the
temporary working of a new world, which is only to stand in this state
of thickness or compaction for a time, till the goodness of God towards
fallen nature has been sufficiently manifested thereby.

[Way-3-36] For as this material system of things may, in a good sense,
be said to be an unnatural state, occasioned by the disorders which the
fall of angels brought into nature; and as it had no beginning, but from
the will of God, commanding the first property of nature to coagulate
and compress their disordered kingdom into a new thickness or
materiality, only as a remedy to stop, remove, and overcome the evil in
nature; so when this remedy shall have had its trial, and the will of
God shall no longer will this compressing together; then all that has
been brought together by it, must fall back again into its first
eternity.  And then, without any possibility of being otherwise, every
birth in this world, that belongs to the root or center of nature, and
has worked with it, must fall down into that eternal abyss of darkness,
on which the light of God forever stands, unknown to it.  And every life
that is born of heaven, and has worked with it, must ascend into the
kingdom of God, or abyss of divine glory and majesty.

[Way-3-37] Oh Academicus!  Look now (whilst these thoughts are alive in
you) at worldly greatness, fleshly wisdom, and earthly schemes of
happiness; and tell me, if you can, what a nothingness, what a folly and
delusion, there is in them?  Look again at the apostle's pilgrim,
abstaining from worldly lusts, desiring to know nothing but Christ, and
him crucified; living in the spirit of prayer, and thirst after God;
striving in everything after the fullest conformity to the tempers,
Spirit, life, and behavior of Christ in this world; and then tell me,
whether heaven and earth, God and nature, and all that is great, and
wise, and happy, does not call upon you to be this pilgrim.

[Way-3-38] Academicus.  Truly, sir, I enough see, that all worldly
wisdom, and ambitious views of a glory of life in the things and
concerns of this world, are no better than vain attempts to be blessed
and happy from the ruins of the angelic kingdom.  For this world is only
a thickness and materiality of the bestial life, built upon the ground
of hell; that is, upon the first properties of fallen nature, brought
into a harder, more compacted state of existence than they have in hell,
and kindled into an astral, terrestrial, bestial life, by the power of
the sun.  The bestial life, therefore, is the highest good and happiness
in it; and the creatures of this world have nothing that they seek for
further in it.  But man, being not created for it, but by sin fallen
into it, is the only creature that makes an unnatural use of it, and
seeks for that in it, and by it, which cannot be found in it.  Man,
having been wise, great, and happy in his creation, though they are all
lost, has yet some remaining sensibility of them, though fallen into a
world, that cannot help him to them.  Hence it is, that he would be
wise, and great, and happy in a world, that has no happiness but for
beasts; and can only help man to know, that he is poor and miserable,
and banished from his true native country.

[Way-3-39] But, instead of learning this one lesson of truth, from the
world he is in, which is all the wisdom, greatness, and happiness, that
can be had from it; he gives himself up to a wisdom that is foolishness,
a greatness that is all meanness, and a happiness that begins and ends
in torment and delusion.  Would you see all his greatness, wisdom and
happiness united, the sum total of earthly glory!  It is, when he has in
his cap the feathers of some birds, wears a painted ribband, laced
clothes, is called by some new name, and drawn from place to place by a
number of beasts.  Now, poor, and mean, and unnatural as this fiction of
earthly glory is; yet this is the powerful idol, that carries all before
it!  that destroys all sense of goodness, and divine virtue!  and keeps
the heart of man so earnestly devoted to it, that he has no sense of the
eternity that is in him; that eternity brought him forth, and eternity
will take him again!

[Way-3-40] Theophilus.  It is true, Academicus, that the highest good of
this world is its bestial life; and therefore it has no more, or other,
happiness for a man than for a beast; can give no more to one, than to
the other; viz.  food and raiment; with which the bestial life in man
ought to be content, as well as in the beast.  But seeing man, in spite
of the nature of things, will have an earthly glory of life; thence it
is, that the wisdom of this world is, and must be, foolishness with God,
and will be foolishness with man, as soon as he gets but a moderate
knowledge of himself.  But give me leave just to observe, that though
this material world has no higher happiness than the bestial life; yet
God hath much higher ends in creating it.  For though the dark wrathful
properties of fallen nature could only, in their compaction, be made the
ground of a vegetable and bestial life; yet you are to observe, that in
the creation of this world; viz.  in the compaction of the whole angelic
kingdom; the unspoiled heavenly part thereof was shut up with that, in
which the wrath was kindled: and that for these two great ends; first,
that, by this compaction, it might be taken out of the power of the evil
angels, that they might not go on in kindling wrath in it.  Secondly,
that this reserved good part of their kingdom might be the foundation
and ground of an heavenly paradisiacal life, and a new host of heavenly
creatures, instead of the fallen angels.  Now, to do this, God created
an human angel, who was to call forth the paradisiacal life out of the
compacted heavenly substantiality, as the sun opened a vegetable bestial
life, out of the gross substantiality of the material world.

[Way-3-41] God breathed the triune Spirit of the holy Deity into a body
taken out of the earth, that is, into a body of that heavenly
substantiality, that was shut up in the earth, as well as in every other
part of this material system; and therefore his body is rightly said to
be taken or formed out of the earth; because it was formed of that
substantiality, that was shut up in the earth.

[Way-3-42] But when his wandering eye had raised a longing desire to
know what the earthly life was in its good and evil, and took the
certain means of knowing it; then, as his soul lost the light and Spirit
of God, so it lost also that heavenly luminous body, in which the light
and Spirit of God could dwell, as it dwelleth in heaven.  And when this
heavenly luminous corporeity was lost, and shut up again in that earthly
bondage and compaction, in which it lay, before it was his body; then
the poor fallen soul was only clothed with the gross corruptibility of
bestial flesh and blood.  You are to understand this matter thus: when
his body was formed out of that heavenly substantiality, that was in the
compaction of the earth, it was not entirely separated from all earthly
materiality (because he was to have a body of this world, as well as of
the heavenly world); but its state in the earthly materiality was
entirely changed; it was till then shut up in the earthly compaction,
but now it is called out of that earthly death into a state of life; it
is set free from the power of the earth, in a superiority over it, to be
its happiness, and open its own glory in it, and through it.

[Way-3-43] And thus you see the possibility, the truth, and the manner
of the thing; how his heavenly body was taken out of the earth at his
creation, set in freedom from it, and in a living superiority over it;
how, at the fall, it was swallowed up, or compacted again in its own
first earth; viz.  the earthly body, or materiality of Adam: for as it
was not separated from this earthly materiality, but only brought to
life in it, and superiority over it; so when the divine light, which was
the life of this body, was lost, it then fell again into a state of
death in that gross materiality, under which it lay before.  And thus,
in the strictest truth, the body of Adam returned again to that very
earth, or dust, from whence it was taken.

[Way-3-44] Now, when this happened, the fallen angels entered again into
some power in their lost kingdom.  There was then something found, with
which they could work, and join their own power.  For as the soul of man
had lost the light and Spirit of heaven, so the same dark center of
nature, or the three first wrathful properties, were opened in it, as
are opened in the fallen angels.  And thus they got entrance into the
awakened hell in man, and can work in it.  For as often as man stirred,
followed, or worked with his will according to these properties, the
devil could enter into, and work with him; and so the first son of
fallen man was made a murderer.  And hence it is, that sin and
wickedness have known no bounds; it is because it is the joint work of
fallen angels, and fallen man.

[Way-3-45] Stay a while, sir, in view of these truths: here you see the
seat and ground, the birth and growth of all sin and evil; it lies in
these three dark, selfish, self-willed, wrathful, hellish properties of
the fallen soul.  This is the dark center of nature, in which the devils
have all their own power in themselves, and all their power in you; and
till you resist this hell within you, till you live in contrariety to
it, the devils will not flee from you.

[Way-3-46] Here also you see, in a self-evident light, the deep ground,
and absolute necessity, of that one redemption, which is called, and is,
the meekness and heavenly blood of the Lamb of God.  For these words in
their true ground mean only the changing of the three first dark
wrathful properties of fallen nature, into the three last properties of
the heavenly life, light, and love, which is the life of God restored to
the soul, or the light, Spirit, or Word of God born again in it.  Let me
only add this one word; turn from wrath of every kind, as you would flee
from the most horrid devil; for it is his, it is he, and his strength in
you.  Whether you look at rage and anger in a tempest, a beast, or a
man, it is but one and the same thing, from one and the same cause; and
therefore your own wrath is to be turned from, as the same with that of
hell; and which has its birth and strength from that hell or center of
nature, which the fall of angels hath made known; and which only worketh
thus differently, whether it be in a man, a beast, or the elements of
this world.  And this must be, till the center of nature is again in its
place of hiddenness, by being wholly overcome by heaven.  Embrace
therefore every meekness of love and humility with the same eagerness as
you would fall down at the feet of Jesus Christ; for it is his, {"is"
missing in printed text, but see sentence 3 of this paragraph for exact
parallel} it is he, and his power of salvation in you.  Enter into no
strife, or self-defense against anyone, that either reproaches you, or
your doctrine; but remember, that if you are to join with Christ in
doing good, your sword of natural wrath must be locked up in its own
sheath; no weapons of the flesh are to be used; but you must work only
in the meekness, the sweetness, the humility, the love and patience of
the Lamb of God; who, as such, is the only doer of good, the only
overcomer of wrath, and the one redemption of fallen nature.  If you are
reproached as an enthusiast, do not take comfort in thinking, that it is
the truth of your own piety, or the want of it in others, that gives
occasion to the charge; for though both of these should happen to be the
case, yet they are not proper reflections for you; and if you take your
peace from them, it is not the peace of God in you: but as in good
report, you are to be as though you heard it not, ascribe nothing to
yourself from it; so in evil report, self is just as much to be
forgotten; and both of them are to be used, only as an occasion to
generate humility, meekness, love, and the Spirit of the Lamb of God,
both in yourself, and all that speak either well or ill of you.  For
this is the will and working of heaven; it has but one will, and one
work; and that is, to change all the wrath, evil, and disorder of
nature, into a kingdom of God.  And therefore he that would be a servant
of God, and work with heaven, must will all that he willeth, do all that
he doth, and bear all that he beareth, in that one Spirit, and one will,
with which heaven ruleth over all the earth.

[Way-3-47] You rejoice to think, that you know the true ground of your
redemption; how heaven comes again into the fallen soul, when that
property of light and love, which is called the fifth property of
nature, is generated in it.  It is indeed a blessed knowledge; but its
blessedness is only then yours, when yourself are this fifth property,
that is, when your life is a life of this fifth property; when, whatever
you do, wherever you go, or whatever you meet, you only do as this fifth
property doth, give nothing but that which it giveth; viz.  its gentle
light and love to every man, and everything, whether it be good or bad.
For this property hath nothing else to give, and yet is always giving;
its nature is, to communicate and impart itself, not here or there, but
always and everywhere; it has no other will.  When therefore this
property (the Christ of God, and the life of heaven) is born in you,
friend and foe will have the same from you; you will have lost all
resentment; you will love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray
for them that despitefully use you; and have but one will towards every
man, and that is, that light and love may do that for him, which they
have done for you.

[Way-3-48] Academicus.  Oh!  Theophilus, you have given me more than I
know how to contain; and yet have increased my thirst after more still.
You have so touched the cord of love within me, that all my nature
stands in a trembling desire after it; I would fain feel nothing else
but the gentle godlike power of love, living in my heart.  Pray
therefore, of all things, help me to understand how the fire, the fourth
property of nature, is born; and how it turns the first three wrathful
forms into the three following forms of heavenly joy, triumph, and
happiness; the first of which three forms, is this fifth of light and
love: therefore, help me here, I beseech you.

[Way-3-49] Theophilus.  What a therefore have you here drawn?  That
therefore, of all things, I must need help you to an opinion, or
notional knowledge, how the fire is born, and how it turns nature into a
kingdom of God.  For was I to join with you in forming notions of this
how, I should only help you to lose all, by being content with the
shadow, instead of the substance.

[Way-3-50] You say, that your nature stands in a trembling desire after
the birth of this light and love: if so, you stand in the very place of
its birth, and must stand there till it is born in you.  It can be born
nowhere else, nor in any other manner; and all that Jacob Behmen has
written, is only to direct and bring you to this place of its birth.  He
himself has given you all the hearsay knowledge that you can have of it;
for he can give you no more from the plainest words.  And therefore, to
help anyone to work with his brain for clear notions, and rational
conceptions, of what he has written, is helping him to do and be that,
which all his works, from the beginning to the end, absolutely declare
against, as contrary to the whole nature and end of them.  Which speak,
as he saith, with the sound of a trumpet; and chiefly to awaken man out
of the dream and death of rational, notional, and hearsay knowledge; and
to show him, that his own inward hunger and thirst after God, is that
alone which can and must open the fountain of light and divine knowledge
in him.

[Way-3-51] But to speak a word or two of the fire, whose birth you want
to know.  You know already, better than any words can tell you, from a
self-evident knowledge, that nature is in you; that it is not God, but
is that which wants God, or its true good; and must be an emptiness, a
pain, and want, till God is manifested in it.  If you ask why nature is
only a state of want and disquiet, and unable to be content with itself;
it is because the eternal, uncreated, incomprehensible light, which no
creature can enter into, is that which gave birth to all nature, and
from whence all nature hath its hungering, and state of want.  For
nature had never come into being, but that the eternal, incomprehensible
light longed to be manifested in an outspoken life of nature and
creatures, and in a visibility and shine of glory: therefore, as nature
came forth from this first longing of the light to be manifested in it,
so nature is in itself only a want and hungering, which the light alone
has raised, and can only satisfy.

[Way-3-52] Now from this longing on both sides, nature wanting God, and
God wanting to be manifested in nature, the union of both is effected;
which is the birth of that eternal fire, or fourth form of nature, which
is always burning in the same degree, that is, always doing the same
thing; viz.  always overcoming and shutting up the three first forms of
nature, and making them to be the hidden root and center of nature; and
always bring forth out of them the three following properties of light
and love, and every joyful sensibility of life; that is, changing nature
into a kingdom of heaven.  Now that which makes this change in the
properties of nature is, and is rightly called, fire, in the strictest
literal meaning of the word; because all that we can conceive as fire in
this world, hath its whole nature, power, and existence, from it.  Not
only the fire of life in animals and vegetables, but the fire in the
kitchen, and the candle, are each of them kindled as it is kindled, and
doth all that it doth from this fourth property, or fire of eternal
nature.  The thickness and darkness in the wood, and the candle, have
fire kindled in them, and light from that fire, in no other way, than as
the fourth property is a fire from the thickness and darkness of nature,
kindled by the light of God entering into union with it.  Had the wood,
and the candle, no water or oil in them, neither of them could give
forth fire and light.  Now water and oil have the properties of light in
them: when therefore the properties of nature in the wood, and the
candle, are put into strife, and begin to work in blackness and darkness
(which is the beginning of every fire), they by this strife open an
entrance for the properties of light in the water, and the oil, to mix
and unite with them; and by this union of darkness and light, that fire
is kindled, which turns the darkness of the wood and candle into a
shining and light.  And thus does every fire kindled in this world bear
an infallible witness to the kindling, the nature, and power, of that
eternal fire, which, kindled by the oil of divine light, changes the
first dark properties of nature into the light and majesty of heaven.
Now what would you know more of fire, or its birth, than that it is, and
only can be, kindled by the light of God entering into, and uniting
with, the first properties of nature in the soul?  Leave off therefore
all working with your reason in the way of notions; empty your heart of
all vain satisfactions in earthly things, that so the first properties
of nature in your soul, finding their misery, and want of God, may make
you to be all hunger, and faith, and desire of him.  And then the fire
must kindle, nothing can hinder it; God will then infallibly come as a
fire and light into your soul, changing all the wanting, empty, restless
properties of your natural life, into a sweetness of a new birth of rest
and peace in him.

[Way-3-53] For nothing works either in God, or nature, or creature, but
desire.  And as God created angels and men out of eternal nature, only
through a longing desire of manifesting his own goodness and happiness
in them, so every angel and man must find God, as a life of happiness
and goodness in him, as soon as nature, either in angel or man, is
become a hunger after God.  For hunger does all in all worlds, and finds
all that it wants, and hungers after.  Everything had its beginning in
it, and from it; and everything is led by it to all its happiness.

[Way-3-54] Academicus.  I am quite satisfied in all my demands, and will
ask for no more help, as to the use I am to make of our author's
writings.  Only tell me when they will all come forth in a new edition,
or which will be published first; for I want several of them, which I
could never get.

[Way-3-55] Theophilus.  If you have but two or three of his books, it is
enough; for everyone of them has all in it that you need be taught, and
sufficiently opens the ground of the whole mystery of the Christian
redemption.  He himself thought his books to be too numerous; and
expressed his wish, that they were all reduced into one.  As he wrote
without any art, and had no knowledge of regularity of composition; so
whatever particular matter he occasionally entered upon, he always began
again afresh from the same first ground, and full opening of the mystery
of nature, from whence he explained and determined the matter he was
upon.  And it was this frequent, and almost constant, repetition of one
and the same ground that swelled his writings into so many volumes;
though it may be said, that there is nothing separately in any of his
books, but what is to be found in almost every other, though not so
largely set forth.  You have no need therefore to run with eagerness
through all his books; but the thing that you are to intend and look
for, is the ground and foundation on which all his doctrines are built,
which contains the true philosophy, or fundamental opening of all the
powers that work both in nature and grace; and that by this knowledge
you may become a true workman yourself; and know how to conform to, and
concur with, all that the working powers, either of nature or grace,
require of you.  Now this ground and foundation of all is (as far as
words can do it) opened to you in every one of his books: and you have
been already also sufficiently brought into the knowledge of it, by what
has been said of the birth of nature; what it is, how it works, how it
came into being, how it is distinct from God, how it wants God, how God
is manifested in it, how every after-thing is from and out of it, is all
that it is, and hath all that it hath, in it, and by it, and must have
all its happiness or misery, according as it works with, or contrary to
nature.  From this fundamental ground, or opening of the working powers
of nature, you have seen how angels could and did, lose their first
state in nature; and how a second new creation could, and did come out
of their fallen state and kingdom, all according to the powers of fallen
nature, overruled, and governed, and put into a new way by the good
creating fiat of God.  You have seen how this new creation, with man its
lord, could, and did, lose also their first created state in nature; and
how God, overruling fallen nature again, did, by his merciful redeeming
fiat, or by the means of the holy Jesus, put this fallen new creation in
a state of recovery, and all done according to the powers, and workings,
and possibilities of nature.  So that nothing is done arbitrarily, or by
mere will, but everything in conformity to the unchangeable workings and
powers of nature; only directed, assisted, and helped, by the mercy of
his redeeming fiat, so far as nature was capable of being helped.  This,
sir, is the true and fundamental ground of all his doctrines; and,
standing upon this ground, you stand in the center of truth, whence
everything that you need to know of God, of nature, of heaven, of hell,
of the fall of man, of his redemption only and solely in and by the Word
or Son of God, is known in such self-evident certainty, as you find and
know the workings of your own life: and also, that happiness, or misery,
life or death, can only be had, or not had, lost or found, solely as a
birth in nature, brought forth by the faith, or magic power of the will
of man, working either with, or contrary to, the redeeming fiat of God.

[Way-3-56] To make therefore a right use of his writings, you should,
for a sufficient time, keep solely to that part of them, which opens the
ground and foundation of the powers that work in grace and nature, till
by a self-evident sensibility it is opened in you, and your heart stands
in a conformity to it, and true working with it: for it is your own
heart, as finding the working powers of nature and grace in itself, and
simply given up in faith to work with them, that is to be your key and
guide to that knowledge you are to have of them; whether it be from the
Holy Scripture, or the writings of this author.  For to this end, he
tells you, he has written all; viz.  to help man to seek and find
himself; what is his birth, his state and place in nature; what he is in
body, soul, and spirit; from what worlds all these three parts of him
are come; how they came to be as they are at present; what his fall is,
and how he must rise out of it.  And therefore, if, in order to seek and
find this ground in yourself, you was, for some sufficient time, to read
only to the 10th chapter of his Three Principles, or to the 6th or 8th
chapter of his Threefold Life; and proceed no farther, till this ground
had made itself manifest in you, and your heart stood in a strict
conformity to it, and working with it; you would then be in a true
fitness to read farther, and reap the full benefit from any other of his
books, that should fall into your hands; whether it was the Way to
Christ, or the book upon the Incarnation.  But, above all things,
remember this advice, as of the last moment to you, Be no reasoner upon
the mystery; seek for no commentaries, or rational explications of it,
to entertain your reason with: for, as soon as you do this; then,
however true and good this mystery may be in itself, it is, with regard
to you, of no better use than that very vain philosophy, and science
falsely so called, condemned by the apostle.  It will only be the same
snare and delusion to you, that other learning and philosophy is to
other people.  For if there is nothing good or divine in you but the
faith, and hope, and love, and desire of your heart turned to God; if
nothing can do any good, be any blessing or happiness to this faith, and
love, and desire turned to God, but only God himself in his holy being;
and if nothing can communicate God to you, but God himself; and if God
cannot communicate himself to you under a notion, or an idea of reason,
but a degree of life, good, and blessing, born or brought to life in
your soul; then you see, that to give yourself up to reasoning, and
notional conceptions, is to turn from God, and wander out of the way of
all divine communications.

[Way-3-57] Academicus.  But if it be strictly thus, Theophilus, had it
not been better, that these deep matters had not been communicated to
the world, since it is so natural to man to make a wrong use of them?

[Way-3-58] Theophilus.  This objection, Academicus, comes with the same
strength against the scriptures themselves.  For, excepting the seven
thousands unknown in every age, as in the days of Elijah, and a few
spiritual fathers and writers in almost every age of the church, bearing
faithful witness to the truth and mysteries of religion, it must be
said, that human learning, governed by human reason, hath, from age to
age, to this very day, not only mistaken the true end and use of the
scriptures, but hath turned them into an occasion of much evil and
mischief.  The scriptures speak only to the heart and conscience of man,
not to amend or enlighten it with notions and opinions formed from the
written letter of the Word; but solely to make the being and power of
God known and adored, and to awaken in man a sensibility of his want of
God; and to turn all the power, and strength, and will of the heart
wholly to God, to receive light, and life, and rest, in his holy being.

[Way-3-59] But to speak now directly to your objection: if I knew of any
person, who stood in the faith and simplicity of the first Christians,
free from all carnal adherence, or vain trust, to party notions,
doctrines, and errors, brought forth by the contention of sects and
churches; whose soul was dead to the earthly nature, and all the
rudiments of this world, seeking only light, life, and salvation, from
God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, living and dwelling in him,
redeeming and sanctifying his whole body, soul, and spirit; to such a
one I could freely say, this mystery was needless; as having all that
already which this mystery would do for him.  For its only end is, to
bring man out of all the labyrinths of false and notional religion, to
this very first state and simplicity of the gospel faith and life.

[Way-3-60] And this may pass for a good reason why this mystery was not
opened by God in the first ages of the church; since there was then no
occasion for it.  For religion began, and went on, rightly, in its own
true way; it had the faith and heart of man; it stood in its own proper
strength and glory, and was an awakened divine life of faith simply
given up with joy and gladness to the mysteries of the gospel; not
wanting any why's or wherefore's, because in the real possession of all
the good, and blessing, and power, of every mystery of salvation.

[Way-3-61] But seeing a worldly spirituality, called in the scripture
the whore riding upon the beast, has had its thousand years in the
church; since not only every kingdom, but almost every corner of
Christendom, has a Babel of its own, built upon some rational
interpretation of the letter of scripture; since learned reason, within
the church, knows no other use of scriptures, but to reproach and
condemn all other Babels, and to find materials to strengthen its own;
since reason, without the church, finds it as easy to reproach and
condemn all revelation, as it is to reproach all these Babels built upon
it; since this is the finished confusion, brought forth by the reason
and fleshly wisdom both of those that defend, and those that oppose the
gospel; how adorable is the goodness of God in vouchsafing to these last
ages of the world such a remedy (viz.  the opening the ground and
mystery of all things) as is suitable to the distressed and confused
state of religion in the world!  And how easy is it also to see the
greatest reasons, why this remedy was not afforded sooner!  For as true
faith did not want it, and learned reason, whilst pleased with itself,
could not be in a condition to receive it; so it was highly suitable to
the goodness and wisdom of God, not to give forth this mystery, till
reason, or fleshly wisdom, had made shipwreck of faith; and had so
filled up the measure of its folly, as to stand in its last and highest
state of distress, perplexity, and confusion.  For any remedy is only
then likely to be rightly received, when distress and perplexity makes
the want of it to be sensibly felt.

[Way-3-62] Let not therefore the genuine, plain, simple Christian, who
is happy and blessed in the simplicity of gospel faith, take offense at
this mystery, because he has no need of it.  For it is God's goodness to
the distressed state of the church, fallen from the life and power of
gospel faith, and groaning under the slavery, darkness, and perplexity
of bewildered reason and opinions.

[Way-3-63] Neither let the orthodox divine, who sticks close to the
phrases and sentiments of antiquity, reject this mystery as heretical,
because it opens a ground of man, and the divine mysteries, not known or
found in the primitive writers.  For this is the very reason, why he
should thankfully receive it with open arms, as having, and being that
very thing, which the distressed divided state of the church now so
greatly wants; and yet did not want, till it was fallen from its first
simplicity of faith.  For whilst faith and life defended the mysteries
of religion, the ground and philosophy of it was not wanted.  But when
orthodoxy had given itself up to reason, and had nothing else for its
support but reason and argument from the letter of scripture, without
the least knowledge of the first ground of doctrines; then it could only
be defended, as it is defended in every sect and division of the
Christian world.  For if reason will defend the mysteries of redemption,
without knowing the true ground on which they stand, or why they must be
as they are, from the nature of the thing; the more zealous and learned
any man is, the more errors must he fall into in the defense of them.
For the greater the strength is, that works without light, the more
extravagancies it must produce.  This is too visible in all the
controversies that have risen in the church.  Now, that learned reason,
as presiding in the divinity schools, never yet had, nor could have, any
knowledge of the ground of man, and the mysteries of redemption, is
plain from this one generally received opinion of every age to this day;
viz.  that all things were created out of nothing.  For this maxim
entirely excludes all possibility of giving any account of the ground
and reason of anything, either in the nature of man, or religion; and is
the same thing as saying, that nothing has any ground or reason.  For if
that which begins to be comes out of nothing, it can only have the
nature of that out of which it comes; and therefore can have no more
said about it, why it is this or that, than can be said of that nothing,
from whence it comes.  And if the mystery, or life of the human nature,
is out of nothing, has no reality of any antecedent ground in it, out of
which it came to be such as it is, and to have that which it hath; then
it is most certain, that all the mysteries of the religion of man must
come forth from the same nothing, and have no antecedent ground from
whence they come, that requires them to be as they are.  For man,
created out of nothing, cannot have a religion that is of any higher
descent than himself, unless he is to have a religion that is quite
unnatural to him.  But a religion that has its ground in eternity, must
be an unnatural religion to man that comes up in time, and out of
nothing.  If therefore you will hold man to be out of nothing, you must
of all necessity hold all the mysteries of the religion of man to be
also out of nothing; and that therefore no possible account can be given
either of the ground of man, or his religion, or why there can be either
right or wrong, good or evil, in either of them.

[Way-3-64] Hence you may see why the truth has always suffered in every
controversy of the church: thus, if you begin with that of St.  Austin
and Pelagius, about the freedom of the human will; do but suppose, what
is fact, that they both of them held the human will to be created out of
nothing; and then you need not wonder at that number of volumes and
systems of errors, which this dispute has brought forth.  For who can
say, what the will is, or is not; what nature or power it must have, if
it is created out of nothing?  Whereas, if either of these disputants
had known, from a true ground, what the human will is; that it cannot be
a made thing, much less made out of nothing; but that the will of angel
or man is the eternal uncreated will become creaturely, as a true direct
birth from the divine will, descended from it, born out of it, and from
thence come into a creaturely state; then they had known, that the will
of angel or man must have the nature and freedom of the eternal will;
and that its freedom not only consisted in its self-motion, but chiefly
and most gloriously in this, that it could neither receive, nor have,
nor be anything, as to its happiness or misery, but according to its own
working: and then all that predestinarian learning of decrees, &c.  that
has tormented the church ever since the time of St.  Austin, had been
prevented.

[Way-3-65] Look next at the Socinian controversy.  The Socinians, and
their opponents, met in the field of reason, to debate about the fall,
original sin, its guilt, the vindictive wrath of God, and the necessity
of the incarnation, sufferings, death, and satisfaction, of Christ.
These were the great points to be tried at the bar of reason.  Now all
these disputants stood upon the old ground; viz.  that the soul of man,
as well as all other things, was created out of nothing.  And therefore
they all stood absolutely excluded from every possibility of touching
the true ground or reason of any one doctrine in debate.  For the soul,
created out of nothing, leaves no room to affirm, or even to suppose,
that anything can be affirmed of the ground and reason of Christian
redemption.  For surely, if the soul of man is created out of nothing,
it may and must with as much sense be affirmed, that it may be redeemed
by nothing; and he that affirms the one, can have no pretense to deny
the other.

[Way-3-66] Just the same may be said of the present controversy betwixt
the Christians and infidels, concerning Christianity itself.  You need
not wonder, that so many learned volumes have had so little effect; or
that the defenders of Christianity seem to lose ground, though the
infidels, at the same time, get no advantage to their cause, but that of
increasing their numbers.  For as neither side can go any higher, than a
creation out of nothing; so neither side can say anything from a true
ground, either for or against the mysteries of the gospel.  If therefore
infidelity increases, it is not because it has got more light, sees
further into the depths of nature, or stands upon a more rational
ground; but merely because the vanity and blindness of the dispute has a
natural tendency to beget indifference and infidelity in the hearts of
men.

[Way-3-67] Observe this proposition; viz.  "In God we live and have our
being."  Now, how easy is it for anyone to see, that no one can say
anything as to the ground and reasons of the mysteries of the gospel,
either for or against them, till he can go to the bottom of this
proposition, and plainly show, either how we do, or do not, live and
move, and have our being in God!  For the truth or falseness of every
mystery of the Christian redemption plainly depends upon this matter.
If the Christian therefore will speak to the purpose, in defense of the
ground of the gospel; he must be able to show, that we so are in God, so
have our life in him, as to prove, from thence, the ground, the
necessity, and certainty, of the Christian means of redemption.  On the
other hand, the Deist cannot take one rational step, or have any true
ground to stand upon, but so far as he can show, that we are not so from
God, have not such a nature in and from him, do not so live and move in
him, as to have any want or any fitness for that method of redemption,
which the gospel teaches.  But as neither side did this, though the one
thing necessary to be done; so you also see, that neither side had any
possibility of doing it.  For the soul, created out of nothing, allows
of no inquiry, whether anything of God be in it, or how it has its life
in him, or stands related to him.  It admits of no searching after any
ground or reason of its good or evil, or how it must have its happiness
or misery from the nature of the thing.  For if the intelligent life
itself must be supposed to come from no ground, but to be created out of
nothing; then it is certain, that its good and evil, its happiness or
misery, with everything else, must be supposed to have no ground or
reason for being as it is, but to be created out of nothing; and may go
again into nothing, just as the creator pleaseth.

[Way-3-68] And now, sir, you may enough see, how all controversy, both
within and without the church, has been so vain a thing.  For reason was
to support doctrines and mysteries, without the least knowledge of the
ground on which they stood; and reason was to oppose them in the same
ignorance.  You see also, why in these last ages, where literal learning
has made so great a figure, that the matter has only been made worse,
and division and error more triumphant.  For as the ground of the truths
was still wanted, and nothing appealed to, but the letter and phrase of
scripture; so the more artful and learned disputants were in reasoning
and criticism, the more absurdities must be defended on both sides.  Why
is not the learned papist shocked at transubstantiation, or the
Protestant at predestination and reprobation?  It is because each of
them have enough of the truth of reason, and the goodness of criticism,
to draw the letter of scripture to his side.  And this you may be
assured of, that reason, and literal learning, have just as good eyes in
every other religious matter, and will give just such an account of
every other doctrine, when it comes into dispute, as the papist and
Protestant have done in these two points.  And the thing cannot be
otherwise: as Deist and Christian both hold a creation out of nothing,
they must both have only an arbitrary God, and arbitrary religion, that
has no antecedent ground to stand upon, but is left to the arbitrary
proof or reason of both of them.  What thanks, therefore, are due to the
goodness of God, for opening this great mystery of all things in our
author, wherein the right and wrong, the true and false, in religion, is
as manifest as anything can be to our senses!  Let no one therefore take
offense at the opening of this mystery, as if it brought anything new
into religion; for it has nothing new in it; it alters no point of
gospel-doctrine, nor adds anything to it, but only sets every article of
the old Christian faith upon its true ground, and in such a degree of
light, as, when seen, is irresistible.  It disturbs no one, who is in
possession of the truth, because it points at nothing, drives to
nothing, but to the opening the heavenly life in the soul.  It calls no
man from any outward form of religion, as such; but only shows, that no
outward form can have any good in it, but so far as it only means, and
seeks, and helps, the renewed life of heaven in the soul.  "A
Christian," says he, "is of no sect, and yet in every sect"; a truth
which all sects, as such, will dislike; and therefore a truth equally
wanted to be known, and equally beneficial to all sects.  For the chief
hurt of a sect lies in this, that it takes itself to be necessary to the
truth; whereas the truth is only then found, when it is known to be of
no sect, but as free and universal as the goodness of God, and as common
to all names and nations as the air and light of this world.

[Way-3-69] Suffer me now, before we part, once more to repeat what I
have so often said, that you would not receive this mystery as a system
of rational notions; nor do with it, as the world has, for the most
part, done with the Bible, only gather opinions of reason and
speculation from it.  For it opens no depth of nature or grace, but to
help you to the heart and spirit of the returning prodigal son, and to
show you the blindness and vanity of reason and opinions; and that truth
can have no possible entrance into you, but so far as you die to your
earthly nature.  The gospel saith all this to you in the plainest words;
and the mystery only shows you, that the whole system of the universe
saith the same thing.  To be a true student or disciple of the mystery,
is to be a disciple of Christ; for it calls you to nothing but to the
plain letter of the gospel; and wherever it enters, either into the
height or depth of nature, it is only to confirm the truth of these
words of Christ; viz.  "He that followeth not me, walketh in darkness:
and unless a man deny himself, and forsake all that he hath, he cannot
be my disciple."  This is the philosophy opened in this mystery.  It is
not to lead you after itself, but to compel you, by every truth of
nature, to turn to Christ, as the one way, the one truth, the one life,
and salvation of the soul; not as notionally apprehended, or
historically known; but as experimentally found, living, speaking, and
working, in your soul.  Read as long or as much as you will of this
mystery, it is all labor lost; if you intend anything else by it, or
would be anything else from it, but a man dead to this world, that you
may live unto God through Christ Jesus, in the power of faith, and the
spirit of prayer.  With these words upon our minds, my friends, let us
now end this conversation.

The End of the Third Dialogue.

FINIS.