Chapter 3
Of The Lamentable Fall Of Man And Of The Means Of His Deliverance
Now when Adam and Eve fell into this Vanity, then the Wrath of Nature awoke in each Property, and in or through the Desire impressed the Vanity of the Earthliness and Wrath of God into itself.
68. And then the Flesh became grossand rough, as the Flesh of a Beast, and the Soul was captivated in that Essence therewith, and saw that its Body was become aBeast, and had gotten the Bestial Members for Multiplication,and the filthy Carcase into which the Desire would stuff the Loathsomeness which it was ashamed of in the Presence of God; and therefore Adam andEve hid themselves under the Trees of the Garden of Eden. Heat andCold also seized on them.
69. And here the Heaven in Mantrembled for Horror; as the Earth quaked in Wrath, when thisAnger was destroyed on the Cross by the sweet Love of God; there the Anger trembled before the sweet Love of God.
70. And for this Vanity’s Sake whichwas thus awakened in Man, God cursed the Earth; lest the holyElement should spring or shine forth any more through the outward Fruit,and bring forth Paradisaical Fruit. For there was then no Creaturethat could have enjoyed it; neither was the earthly Man worthy ofit any more.
71. God would not cast the precious Pearlsbefore Beasts; an ungodly Man in his Body being but a mere grossBeastial Creature; and though it be of a noble Essence, yet itis wholly poisoned and loathsome in the Sight of God.
72. Now when God saw that his fair Imagewas spoiled, he manifested himself to fallen Adam and Eve and had Pity onthem, and promised himself to them for an everlasting Possession,and that with his great Love in the received Humanity he woulddestroy the Power of the Serpentine Property, viz., of theVanity in the Wrath of God awakened in them. And this was theBreaking of the Head of the Serpent which he would perform, viz.,he would destroy the dark Death, and subdue the Anger withhis great Love.
73. And this Covenant of hisIncarnation which was to come, he put into the Light of Life;to which Covenant the Jewish Sacrifices pointed as to aMark or Limit, to which God had promised himself with hisLove; for the Faith of the Jews entered into theSacrifices and Offerings, and God’s Imagination entered intothe Covenant.
74. And the Offering was a Figureof the Restitution of that which Adam hath lost, and so Goddid expiate his Anger in the human Property, throughthe offering in the Limit of the Covenant.
75. In which Covenant the most holysweet Name Jesus, proceeding out of the holy Name and great PowerJehovah, had incorporated itself; so that he would again move andmanifest himself in the Substance of the Heavenly World whichdisappeared in Adam, and kindle the holy Divine Life thereinagain.
76. This Mark or Limit of theCovenant at the End, in the Root of David in the Virgin Mary,who was, in the inward Kingdom of the hidden Humanity, (viz., of theEssentiality that disappeared as to the Kingdom of God) the Daughter of God’sCovenant, but in the outward according to the natural Humanity,she was begotten by her true bodily Father Joachim and her true Mother Anna,out of the Essence and Substance of their Souls and Bodies, like all otherChildren of Adam; a true Daughter of Eve.
78. In this Mary from the Virgin (viz., theWisdom of God) in the promised Limit of the Covenant, ofwhich all the Prophets have prophesied. – The Eternal Speaking Word,which created all Things, did in the Fullness of Time move itself in theName Jesus, according to its highest and deepest Love andHumility, and bring again living, Divine, and HeavenlySubstantiality into the Humanity of the heavenly Part,which disappeared in Adam, and from which he died inParadise, into the Seed of Mary, into the Tincture of Love, intothat Property wherein Adam should have propagated himself in aMagical and Heavenly Manner, into the true Seed of the Woman,of Heavenly Substantiality, which disappeared in paradise.
79. And when the Divine Light in theHeavenly Essence was extinguished, the Word of God,viz., the Divine Power of the Understanding, did bring inHeavenly and living Substantiality, and awakened the disappearedSubstantiality in the Seed of Mary, and brought it to Life.
80. And so now God’s Substance, whereinHe dwelleth and worketh, and the disappeared Substance of Man, arebecome one Person; for the Holy Divine Substantiality did anoint the disappeared; therefore that Person is called Christus,the Anointed of God.
81. And this is the dry Rod of Aaron, whichblossomed and bare Almonds, and the true High Priest; and it isthat Humanity of which Christ spake, saying that, `He was comefrom Heaven and was in Heaven,’ and that no man could ascend into Heavenbut the Son of Man which is come from Heaven, and is in Heaven.’
82. Now when he saith, `He is come from Heaven,’it is meant of the Heavenly Substance, the Heavenly Corporeality;for the Power and Virtue of God needeth no coming any whither, forit is everywhere altogether immeasurable and undivided. But Substanceneedeth coming; the Power or Virtue needeth to move itself, andmanifest itself in Substance.
83. And that Substance entered intothe human Substance, and received it; not that Part only ofHeavenly Substantiality, which disappeared in Adam, but the wholehuman Essence in Soul and Flesh, according to all the threeWorlds.
84. But He hath not received, or taken uponHimself, the awakened or impressed Vanity, which the Devil,by his Imagination, brought into the Flesh, by which theFlesh did commit Sin. Though He hath indeed taken upon Himthe awakened Forms of Life, as they were gone forth from their equalAgreement, each of them into its own Desire.
85. For therein lay our Infirmity, andthe Death, which He was to drown with his Heavenly holy Blood.Herein He took upon himself all our sins and Infirmities, alsoDeath and Hell in the Wrath of God, and destroyed their Powerin the human Properties.
86. The Wrath of God was the Hellinto which the Spirit of Christ went, when He had shed that heavenlyBlood into our outward human Blood, and tinctured it with theLove; thereby changing that Hell of the human Property intoHeaven, and reducing the human Properties into equal Agreement,into the Heavenly Harmony.