what they think, they are forced to say, that in each there is a communion of all the attributes, and this solely by reason that they have entertained some faint idea of God in respect to essence: therefore, my pupils, think of God from his essence, and from that of his person, and not from his person, and from this of his essence, for to think of his essence from his person, is to think materially of his essence also; but to think of his person from his essence, is to think spiritually even of his person. The ancient Gentiles, inasmuch as they thought materially of God, and also of the attributes of God, not only feigned three gods, but many more, to the number of a hundred: know then that what is material does not flow into what is spiritual, but what is spiritual flows into what is material. It is the same with respect to thinking of our neighbour from his form, and not from his quality, and of heaven from place, and not from the love and wisdom which constitute heaven. It is the same with all and every single thing in the Word; therefore he who entertains a material idea of God, and likewise of his neighbour and of heaven, cannot understand any thing that it contains; the Word is to him a dead letter, and he himself, when he reads it and meditates on it, appears at a distance like a dead horse. They whom you saw falling from heaven, and who appeared in your sight like dead horses, were such as had closed the rational sight in themselves and others by this peculiar tenet, that the understanding is to be kept in subjection to their faith; not considering that the understanding, when closed from a principle of religion, is as blind as a mole, and there is nothing but mere darkness in it, and such darkness as rejects from itself all spiritual light, opposes its influx from the Lord and from heaven, and sets up a barrier against it in the sensual corporeal part, far below the rational in matters relating to faith, that is, places it in the nose, and fixes it in its cartilage, on which account they cannot afterwards so much as scent spiritual things; whence some have been reduced to such a state as that the very scent of any thing spiritual throws them into a swoon by scent I mean perception. These are they who make God three; they say, indeed, from an idea of his essence, that God is that God is one, but yet when they pray in conformity to their faith, to the following effect, that God the Father would have mercy for the sake of the Son and send the Holy Spirit, they evidently make three gods: they cannot do otherwise, for they pray to one to have mercy for the sake of another, and send a third." After this the master taught them concerning the Lord, that he is the one God, in whom there is a divine trinity.

END OF VOL. I.