The Signature of All Things, by Jacob Boehem, [1912], at sacred-texts.com
The Signature of All Things, by Jacob Boehem, [1912], at sacred-texts.com
CONCERNING THE WILL OF THE GREAT MYSTERY IN GOOD AND EVIL, SHEWING FROM WHENCE A GOOD AND EVIL WILL ARISES, AND HOW ONE INTRODUCES ITSELF INTO THE OTHER
1. Every property takes its original from the first, viz. from the first impression or desire to nature, viz. out of the grand mystery, and brings forth itself out of itself, as the air proceeds out of the fire, and all whatever proceeds forward in one will is uncontrollable, for it gives itself to no property; it dwells even from the first original only in itself, and goes forth in one will; and this is the true way of eternity, wherein there is no corruptibility if a thing remains in its own peculiar property, for the great mystery is from eternity: Now if the form of the same proceeds forth, and manifests itself out of itself, then this form stands with the root in the mystery of eternity; but if the form brings itself forth into another lust, so that two properties must dwell in one, then from thence arises the enmity and abominate; for there has been from eternity only the one element in motion, 1 and the free lubet of eternity, which proceeded forth with its motion from the great mystery of eternity as a spirit, which spirit is God's.
2. But when the great mystery did once move itself, and introduced the free lubet into the desire of the essence, then in the desire the strife began; for there arose in the desire out of the element, which bears only one will, four elements, viz. manifold desires and wills, which rule in one only body, where now there is contrariety and strife; as heat against cold, fire against water, air against earth, each is the death and destruction of the other; so that the creature which stands in this dominion is nothing else but a continual dying and a strife; it is an enmity and contrary will in itself, and cannot be remedied unless it enters again into one will, which also cannot be brought to pass, unless the multiplicity of the wills be destroyed, and wholly die to the desire, from whence the four elements arise; so that the will does again become that which it was from eternity: Herein we men do know what we are in the dominion of the four elements,
nothing else but a strife and a contrary will, a self-envying, 1 a desire of the abominate, a lust of death.
3. For the lust which arises out of the desire must die; if the will (which proceeded out of the great mystery of eternity, which the Spirit of God breathed into the image of man, viz. into the likeness) will be freed from the abominate and contrary will, then the desire of the four elements must die, and the will must enter again into the one only element, it must again receive the right of eternity, and act and go forth in one element, in manner also as God created him, whom he himself has opposed, and brought himself into the dominion of the four elements, in which he has inherited death, and also the strife in the forms of life, from whence arises his sickness, loathing, and enmity: For all whatever lives in God's will, that is not risen in the self-will, or if it be risen therein, it is again dead to the own [or selfish] desire.
4. Every will which enters into its self-hood, and seeks the ground of its life's form, the same breaks itself off from the great mystery, and enters into a self-fulness, it will be its own [or of its own selfish jurisdiction], and so it is contrary to the first mystery, for the same is alone all: And this child is accounted evil, for it strives in disobedience against its own mother which has brought it forth; but if the child does again introduce its will and desire into that, from whence it is generated and risen originally, then it is wholly one with the same, and cannot be annoyed by anything; for it enters into the nothing, viz. into the essence, from whence it proceeded.
5. Thus, O man! understand what thou art to do; behold thyself in thyself, what thou art, whether or no thou standest in the resignation of thy mother (out of which thou wert generated and created in the beginning), whether thou art inclined with the same will; if not, then know that thou art a rebellious, stubborn, disobedient child, and hast made thyself thine own enemy, in that thou art entered into self-desire and will, and hast made thyself thy own self-ful possession, so that thou canst not dwell in the first mother, but in thyself: For thy will is entered into self-hood; and all that does vex, plague, and annoy thee, is only thy self-hood; thou makest thyself thy own enemy, and bringest thyself into self-destruction or death.
6. Now if thou wilt get again out of death, then thou must wholly forsake thy own self-desire, which has introduced itself into strange essence, and become in self-hood, and the self-desire, as a nothing, so that thou dost no longer will or desire to thyself,
but wholly and fully introduce thy desire again with the resignation into the eternal, viz. into God's will, that the same will may be thy will and desire.
7. Without this there is nothing but misery and death, a continual dying and perishing; for hence arises the election of grace. If the human will (which is departed out of the unity of eternity, and entered into a self-fulness, viz. into a selfish lust and desire) does again break itself off from self-hood, and enter into the mortification of self-will, and introduce its desire again only into the first mother, then the first mother does again choose it to be its child, and makes it again one with the only will of eternity: But that [will or person] which continues in self-hood, he continues in the eternal dying, viz. in an eternal selfish enmity; and this also is only called sin, because that it is an enmity against God, in that the creature will be at its self-ful command and government.
8. Thus in its self-hood, viz. in a dominion full of contention and strife, it cannot either will or do anything that is good; and as it does impose, awaken, and powerfully stir up to its self nothing else but the dying and death, so likewise it can do nothing else to its fellow-members; for hence also arises the falsehood [or lyes], that the creature denies the union with [or in] the will of God, and sets his self-hood in the place; so that it goes forth from the unity into desires and self-lusts: If it did but truly know that all beings were its mothers, which brought it forth, and did not hold the mother's substance for its own, but for common, then the covetousness, envy, strife, and contrary will and enmity would not arise; from which the anger, viz. the fire of destruction does arise.
9. All sins arise from self; for the self-hood forces itself with the desire into its self-fulness; it makes itself covetousness and envy, it draws in its own desire strange essence into itself, and makes the possessor of the strange essence also an enemy against itself, so that sin is wrought with sin, vileness with vileness, and all run confusedly in and among one another, as a mere abomination before the eternal mother.
10. In like manner also we are to consider of the regenerate will, which goes out of its selfishness or self-hood again into the resignation; the same becomes also an enemy and an abominate to self-hood; as sickness is an enemy to health, and on the contrary, health an enemy to sickness: Thus the resigned will, and also the self-will are a continual enmity, and an incessant lasting war and combat.
11. Self-will seeks only what serves to its self-hood; and the resigned will is not at all careful, but brings its desire only into its eternal mother, that it might be one with her: It will be a nothing, that the mother might be alone all in it. Self-will says to the resigned will, Thou art foolish, in that thou givest thyself to death, and yet mightest well live gloriously in me; but the resigned will says, Thou art my abomination, pain, and enmity, and bringest me out of eternity into a time only into perplexity and misery; thou plaguest me a while, and then thou givest my body to the earth, and the soul to hell.
12. True real resignation is the mortification of the abominate against God; he that wholly forsakes his self-hood, and gives himself up with mind and desire, senses and will, into God's mercy, into the dying of Jesus Christ, he is dead to the earthly world with the will, and is a twofold man; where the abominate works only in itself to death, bait the resigned will lives in Christ's death, and rises up continually in Christ's resurrection in God: And though the self-desire sins, which indeed can do nothing else but sin, yet the resigned will lives not in sin, for it is mortified to the desire of sin, and lives through Christ in God in the land of the living; but self-hood lives in the land of death, viz. in the continual dying, in the continual enmity against God.
13. The earthly man is the curse of God, and is an abominate before God's holiness; he can do nothing else but seek his selfhood, for he is in the wrath of God: And though he does some thing that is good, yet he does it not from his own self-will, but the will resigned in God compels him that he must do what his self would not willingly do: And now if he does it, he does it as an instrument of the resigned will, not from his own desire, but from God's will, which guides the resigned will in the desire as an instrument.
14. Therefore now whoever will see the kingdom of God, and attain thereunto, he must educe [or bring forth] his soul out of self-hood, out of the earthly desire, as the physician brings forth the cure of the disease from the painful [tormenting] desire, and introduces it into a love-desire; and then the cure also brings forth the sickness in the body out of the painful desire, and sets it into a love-desire: Sickness becomes the servant of the physic; and so likewise the evil earthly will, when the soul's will is cured, is the resigned will's servant.
15. The elemental and siderial man must only be the instrument wherewith man's soul labours in the resigned will; for thereto God has also created it; but the soul has made and set
up itself in Adam for lord and master, and is entered into his prison, and given its will thereinto; but if it will be acknowledged for God's child, then it must again die to the same, and be wholly mortified to the earthly self-hood and desire in God's will in Christ's death, and be wholly regenerated anew in God's will, and deprive the earthly will in self-hood of its power, and rule over it, and guide it in subjection and command, as a master does his instrument, and then self-hood loses the power and prevalence, and the lust of self-hood arises as a continual longing; self-hood does then continually long after the forms of its own life, viz. after self-glory, and after earthly abundance, also after envy and anger, whether it may be able to attain that abundance; and also after the cunning lyes of falsehood: These are the vital forms of the earthly self-hood.
16. But the resigned will does as a potent champion continually bruise the head of this serpent, and says, "Thou art arisen from the devil, and God's anger, I will have none of thee, thou art an abomination before God." And though the resigned will is sometimes captivated with false lust, when it overwhelms and overpowers it with the devil's desire and insinuation of its imagination, yet the resigned will does forthwith cry to the word 1 of God, that God's will does again bring it out of the abomination of death.
17. The resigned will has no rest here in this cottage, but must always be in combat, for it is lodged in a false house: It is indeed in itself in God's hand; but, without itself it is in the jaws and throat of the abyss of God's anger in the kingdom of devils, which continually pass up and down with it, and desire to try and tempt the soul, viz. the centre.
18. In like manner also the good angels stand by him in the resigned will, viz. in the divine desire, and defend him from the poisonful imagination of the devil; they keep off the fiery darts of the wicked one, as St. Peter says.
19. For all do work and desire in man, God's love and anger: He stands while he is in this tabernacle in the gate either to go out or in: Both eternal principles are stirring in him; to which the soul's will gives itself, of that it is received, and thereto it is chosen; he is drawn of both, and if the will of the soul remains in self-hood, then he is m the hand of God's anger.
20. But if he departs out of his self-hood, and forsakes his own damnation, and continually casts himself only into God's mercy, viz. into the suffering and death of Christ, and into his
resurrection and restoration, and wills nothing of himself, but what God wills in him, and by him, then the will is dead to the life and desire of God's anger; for it has no own life, but lies in the death of self-hood and the desire of the devil; and the anger of God cannot reach him; for he is as a nothing, and yet is in God, and lives in the divine essence wholly, but not to himself, but to his first mother of eternity: He is again in the limit or place where he was before he was a creature, and in the will wherein God created him, and is an instrument in the voice of God, upon which only the will-spirit of God does strike, to its honour and deeds of wonder.
21. All self-ful seeking and searching in self-hood is a vain thing; self-will apprehends nothing of God, for it is not in God, but without God in its self-hood; but the resigned will apprehends it; for it does not do it, but the spirit in whom it stands still, whose instrument it is, he manifests himself in the divine voice in it as much as he pleases: And though it may apprehend much in self-hood by searching and learning (which is not wholly to no purpose), yet its apprehension is only without in the expressed word, viz. in a form of the letter; and it understands nothing of the form of the expressed word, how the same is in its ground; for it is only born in the form from without, and not in the power of the universal pregnatress, whose ground has neither beginning, comprehension, or end.
22. Now that he is born from within out of the speaking voice of God in God's will-spirit, he goes in the byss and abyss everywhere free, and is bound to no form; for he goes not in self-hood, but the eternal will guides him as its instrument, according as it pleases God: but he that is born only in the letter, he is born in the form of the expressed word, and goes on in self-hood, and is a self-ful voice; for he seeks what he pleases, and contends about the form, and leaves the spirit which has made the form.
23. Such a doctor Babel is; it contends, wrangles, and rages about the form of the word, and continually introduces the self-ful spirit and understanding in the form, and cries out, Here is the Church of Christ; and it is only a self-ful voice, understanding nothing of the spirit of the form which is incomprehensible, and strikes upon its prepared instrument without limit and measure as it pleases. For conjecture, opinion, or the self-ful own imagination, which arises in the expressed voice [or literal outward word], is not God's word; but that which arises in God's Spirit in the wholly resigned will in divine power in the eternal
speaking word, that takes its original out of God's voice, and makes the form in the heart, viz. a divine desire, whereby the soul's will is drawn into God.
24. He is a shepherd, and teacher of Christ, who enters in through the door of Christ, that is, who speaks and teaches by Christ's spirit; without this there is only the form, viz. the history 1 that was once brought to pass, and that a man need only accept of it, and comfort himself therewith: but this will remains without, for it will be a child of an assumed grace, and not wholly die to its self-hood in the grace, and become a child of grace in the resigned will.
25. All whatever teaches of Christ's satisfaction, and comforting oneself with Christ's suffering, if it teaches not also the true ground how a man must wholly die to self-hood in the death, and give himself up in the resigned will wholly into the obedience of God, as a new child of a new will, the same is without, and not in the speaking voice of God, viz. in Christ's door.
26. No flattering or comforting avails anything, but to die to the false will and desire in Christ's death, and to arise in the wholly resigned will in Christ's resurrection in him, and continually mortify the earthly self-hood, and quench the evil which the earthly will introduces into the imagination, as an evil fire which would fain continually burn.
27. Comforting and setting the suffering of Christ in the forefront is not the true faith; no, no, it is only without, and not within: But a converted will, which enters into sorrow for its earthly iniquity, and will have none of it any more; and yet finds that it is kept back by the self-ful earthly lust, and with his converted will departs sincerely out of this abomination and false desire into God's mercy, and casts himself with great anxious [earnest] desire into Christ's obedience, suffering, and death, and in the converted will wholly dies to the earthly lust in Christ's death, which will not depart out of Christ's death, and continually cries Abba, loving Father! take thy dear Son's obedience for me; let me only in his death live in his obedience in thee; let me die in him, that I may be nothing in myself, but live and be in his will, in his humanity in thee; receive me, but wholly in his resurrection, and not in my unworthiness; but receive me in him; let me be dead in him, and give me his life, that I may be thy obedient son in him, that his suffering and death may be mine, that I may be before the same Christ in
him who has deprived death of its might, viz. a branch or twig of his life.
28. Thus, and no otherwise, is the true Christian faith; it is not only a comforting, but an incessant desire; the desire obtains the suffering of Christ, which [desire] would continually fain be obedient, if it knew but how it should behave itself before him, which continually does fall down before him, and dives itself into the deepest humility before him; it suffers and does all things readily, only that it might but receive grace; it is willing to take the cross of Christ upon itself, and regards not all the scorn of all the world in its self-hood, but continually presses forward into Christ's love-desire: This desire does only grow out of Christ's death, and out of his resurrection in God, and brings forth fruit in patience which is hidden in God, of which the earthly man knows nothing, for it finds itself in its selfhood.
29. A true Christian is a continual champion, and walks wholly in the will and desire in Christ's person, as he hath walked up and down upon the earth. Christ, when he was upon the earth, desired to overcome death, and bring the human self-hood in true resignation into divine obedience: And this likewise a right Christian desires to do; he desires continually to die to the iniquity of death and wrath, and give himself up to obedience, and to arise and live in Christ's obedience in God.
30. Therefore, dear brethren, take heed of putting on Christ's purple mantle without a resigned will; the poor sinner without sorrow for his sins, and conversion of his will, does only take it in scorn to Christ: Keep you from that doctrine which teaches of self-ful abilities, and of the works of justification.
31. A true Christian is himself the great and anxious work which continually desires to work 1 in God's will, and forces against the self-ful lusts of self-hood, and wills continually so to do, and yet is many times hindered by self-hood: He breaks self-hood, as a vessel, wherein he lies captive, and buds forth continually in God's will-spirit, with his desire resigned in God (as a fair blossom springs out of the earth), and works in and with God, what God pleases.
32. Therefore let the true Christendom know, and deeply lay to heart, what is now told and spoken to her, viz. that she depart from the false conjecture [or opinion] of comforting, without conversion of the will; it is only an outward [expressed] form
of the new-birth; a Christian must be one spirit with Christ, and have 1 Christ's will and life in him; the form does not renew him, neither comforting, or giving good words does at all help or avail, but a mortifying of the evil inbred will, which is God's child, and born out of Christ's death, no other will attains Christ's inheritance; my much knowing doth not also do it; the herdsman in the field is as near to it as the doctor; no wit or subtle art in disputation about the way of God does help or avail anything thereto, it is only a let and hinderance; the true will enters into the love of God and his children; it seeks no form, but falls down before its creator, and desires the death of its false self-hood; it seeks the work of love towards all men; it will not flourish in the world's scorn, but in its God; its whole life is a mere repentance, and a continual sorrow for the evil which cleaves to it: It seeks no glory or applause to shew itself, but lives in humility: It acknowledges itself always as unworthy and simple; its true Christianity is always hidden in its self-hood. He says, "I am in my self-hood an unprofitable servant, and have not as yet begun to do or work repentance right." He is always in the beginning to work repentance, and would always fain reach the gates of the sweet grace; he labours for that purpose as a woman in travail labours to bring forth, and knows not how it fares with him; the Lord hides his face from him, that his working may be great towards him: He sows in anguish and tears, and knows not his fruit, for it is hidden in God; as a painful traveller goes a long way, aiming at his wished-for journey's end, so also he runs after the far mark of his rest, and finds it not; unless his pearl does appear to him in its beauty, and embraces him in its love: If it again departs from his self-hood, then arises sighing and sorrowing again with continual desire; and one day calls another, the day the night, and the night the morning; and yet there is no place of rest in the earthly self-hood, but only in the fair solar lustre of his precious pearl; when the sun arises to him in the darkness, then the night departs, and all sorrow and anguish fly away.
33. Therefore, dear brethren, learn to take heed and beware of contention, where men contend about the literal form: A true Christian has nothing to contend for, for he dies to his reason's desire; he desires only God's knowledge in his love and grace, and lets all go which contends and strives about the form, for Christ's spirit must make the form in himself; the outward
form is only a guide: God must become man, or else man becomes not God.
34. Therefore a Christian is the most simple [or plainest] man upon the earth, as Isaiah says, "Who is so simple as my servant?" All heathens desire self-hood, and tear and devour one another for the authority and honours: But a true Christian desires to die to them; he seeks not his own, but Christ's honour. All whatever contends about self-hood, viz. about the self-ful honour and pleasure of this life, the same is heathenish, and far worse than heathenish; yea like the devil, who departed from God into self-fulness: Let it cover itself with Christ's mantle as much as ever it will, yet the man of false self-hood is lodged under it; if he will be a Christian, then he must quite die to self-hood, that the same may only hang to him from without as a garment of this world, wherein he is a stranger and pilgrim, and always consider and think that he is but a servant in his high office, and serves God therein as a servant, and not be his own lord and master.
35. All whatever does lord itself without God's call and appointment, the same is from the devil, and serves the devil in his own power and form: Defend and flatter thyself as much as thou wilt, it does not avail before God; thy own heart accuses thee that thou art a false branch; thy nobility and highness do not at all avail or help thee in the sight of God, if thou dost not thereby drive in God's order; thy office is not thine, but God's; if thou walkest falsely therein, then thy own judgement is upon thee, and condemns thee to death; thou art a servant; and though thou art a king, yet thou servest, and must enter with the poorest into the new birth, or else thou shalt not see God.
36. All self-ful assumed [or arrogated] laws and authority, wherewith the poor are vexed and oppressed, do all come from self-hood, whose original is in the expressed form, which has with the form introduced itself into a self-hood, and brought itself out quite from God: Whatever does not serve in a servant's office before God, the same is all false, let it be either high or low, learned or unlearned: We are altogether servants of the great God; nothing brings itself into a self-fulness, unless it be born in God's anger in the impression of nature: And though a Christian possesses an own-hood, which is not false, yet he is only but a servant therein, viz. a distributer for his Master, a steward and overseer of his Master's work: He deals for his Master therein, and not for his self-hood only; all whatever he
plots and devises to bring into self-hood, and brings it, that he brings into the anxious cabinet of covetousness, envy, and self-ful pleasure of the flesh, viz. into a vessel that is separated from God, viz. into the impression of nature, and steals from his Lord and Master who has set him up for a steward; he is a sacrilegious person, 1 let him excuse himself, and pretend what he pleases.
37. A true Christian acknowledges himself for a servant of God, to whom it is given in charge to deal right with God's works. He is not his own, for he is also not at home in this earthly work of this tabernacle: Let him seek, search, plant and build, traffic and trade; and whatever else he does, he must always know that he does it to God, and shall give an account thereof, and that he is a stranger and servant in this work, and serves his Master; and not at all look upon the course of his forefathers who have walked therein in the pleasure of the earthly life; whoever does so is far from the kingdom of God, and can with no conscience and ground call himself [or think himself to be] a Christian; for he stands only in the form of Christianity, and not in the spirit of Christ; the form shall be destroyed, and cease with time, but the spirit remains steadfast for ever.
38. A true Christian is in the spirit a Christian, and in continual exercise to bring forth its own form, not only with words in sound and shew, but in the power of the work, as a visible palpable form, not weening, conjecturing, and giving good words out of the self-ful self-hood, and yet remaining in self-hood; but a dying to self-hood, and a growing forth in the will of God in the love-self-hood as a servant of God in God's deeds of wonder; a helping to strike his instrument in God's will, and be a true sounding string in God's harmonious concert; a continual making word in God's voice, viz. in the verbum fiat, which makes and works in and with God what God makes, forms, and works, as an instrument of God.
39. Therefore, O thou dear Christendom, behold thyself, whether thou workest in the working word of God in his will, or whether thou standest only in the form of Christendom, and workest thy own self-fulness in falsehood: Thou wilt find, how thou art become an abomination before the Most High, and thy casting forth 2 from the Most High out of this form (which thou in thy self-hood hast introduced into his expressed form) shall presently follow; and that because thou coverest thyself with the true form, and art a false child therein: Therefore thou
art sought, and found with a false veil [or covering] in thy own form.
40. And as thou hast brought thyself into a false self-ful form under the true form, so thou shalt also destroy thyself, whereto the heaven helps thee, which thou hast a long time served in obedience, and from this there is no withholding; thy work is found to be in the turba, which shall well satisfy and satiate itself in destroying, as thou hast built up thyself in thy apostate falsehood in thy own form under the name of the true form, and hast played the hypocrite before God with the shew and ostentation of holiness, and only served the earthly man: But the servant of the Lord shall be sought and found; the Lord feeds his lambs in his own form, and brings them into his pasture; all the haughty and wealthy of the world shall find by experience what judgment the Lord will bring upon the face of all the earth, and all wicked hope shall be destroyed; for the day of the harvest draws near: "A terror from the Lord shaketh the earth, and his voice soundeth in all the ends of the earth;" and the star of his wonders arises, no one hinders it, for it is concluded of in the counsel of the watchmen in the gates of the deep.
41. Therefore let every one seek and find himself; for the time of visitation is at hand, that he may be found in his love; for the turba has found all false lust in it, and the Most High worker of all essences manifests the turba; and then all false lust or imagination becomes manifest, and each thing enters into its eternal keeper, for all things are generated out of imagination: So also it shall receive its property in the imagination, and every imagination 1 reaps its own work which it has wrought; for to that end all things have appeared, that the eternity might be manifest in a time: With deeds of wonder it brought itself into the form of time, and with deeds of wonder it carries itself forth again out of the time into its first place.
42. All things enter again into that from whence they proceeded; but they keep their own form and model, as they have introduced themselves in the expressed word; and everything shall also be received of its likeness, and the end is always; 2 and as all things generate themselves in the expressed word, so also they are signed in their inward form, which also signs the outward.
43. The self-ful will makes a form according to its innate nature; but a form is made in the resigned will according to the platform or model of eternity, as it was known in the glass.
of God's eternal wisdom before the times of this world; so the eternal will figures and forms it into a model of its likeness to the honour and wonderful acts of God; for all whatever goes on in its self-hood, the same forms itself; but what resigns itself freely, that is formed of the free will: Now no self-ful form with its own self-will can inherit the only Eternal Being; for where there are two wills in one, there is enmity.
44. Seeing then God is one only God, then all whatever will live in him must be like his will and word: As a concert of music must be tuned into one harmony, though there be many strings, and manifold voices and sounds therein; so must the true human harmony be tuned with all voices into a love melody, and that will-spirit which is not tuned unto the only concert in the divine voice, the same is cast forth out of this tune, and brought into its self-ful tune, viz. into its true fellow-voices of its own likeness; for every likeness shall receive its own.
45. Has any been here an evil spirit? Then he shall be introduced into the root of his likeness; for every hunger receives its like into itself; now the whole manifestation of eternity with this time is nothing else but an hunger and generation; as the hunger is, so is also the essence of its satiating; for with the hunger the creature took its beginning, and with the hunger it enters into its eternal [being].
46. In the hunger the spirit with the body is generated, and in the same hunger it goes into its eternal being, unless it breaks its first hunger, and brings itself into another by mortification, else all is at its end as soon as it is born; but death is the only means whereby the spirit may enter into another source and form: If it dies to its self-hood, and breaks its will in death, then a new twig springs forth out of the same, but not according to the first will, but according to the eternal will; for if a thing enters into its nothing, then it falls again to the creator, who makes that thing as it was known in the eternal will, before it was created to a creature; there it is in the right aim or limit of eternity, and has no turba, for it is in nature's end.
47. Whatever runs on in nature torments itself, but that which attains nature's end, the same is in rest without source, and yet works, but only in one desire: All whatever makes anguish and strife in nature, that makes mere joy in God; for the whole host of heaven is set and tuned into one harmony; each angelical kingdom into a peculiar instrument, but all mutually composed together into one music, viz. into the only love-voice of God:
[paragraph continues] Every string of this melody exalts and rejoices the other; and it is only a mere ravishing lovely and delightful hearing, tasting, feeling, smelling, and seeing: Whatever God is in himself, that the creature is also in its desire in him; a God-angel, and a God-man, God all in all, and without him nothing else. As it was before the times of this world in his eternal harmony [or voice], so also it continues in the creaturely voice in him in his eternity; and this is the beginning and the end of all things.
196:1 Or working property.
197:1 Our own enemies.
200:1 Voice or breath.
202:1 That Christ once died and suffered for us, etc.
203:1 Or works desire.
204:1 Bear, or carry.
206:1 Text, a pilferer from God and his substance.
206:2 Spewing out.
207:1 Lubet or longing desire.
207:2 Or, this is always the end.