himself under three Appearances, Forms Natures or Essences, of Fire, Light and Spirit, or Father Son and Spirit; which tho' the Trinity be from Eternity in God, or Coeternal to God, that is to the Unity, the Generati∣on of God being from Eternity, are not known, as I said, before God moved himself to Nature without himself; but were hid in God him∣self, and brought to pass in himself before his outward Nature, or his manifestation; the Godhead in Unity, as it is without Nature, being but a dark Abyss. And these three appearances or distinct forms and degrees of Gods manifestation, are called Father, and Son, and Spirit: Fa∣ther, because the Godhead or Unity is the ground, the stock, the Womb that brings forth out of its deep the Light, its first Born or Son, and only be∣gotten Son; called Son by the Hebrews, on the very same account as their Language calls a Spark, the Son of the burning Coal: Son, because he doth come forth like a Spark out of the Coal, by breaking and shining forth out of the dark lump or deep, 2 Cor. 4. 6. And thirdly, they are called by the name of the Spirit, because the same Unity doth not only shew it self, or make it self manifest in the Light, or by the Son; but makes it self to be felt, and communicates its good in the form of a Spirit, or Beams flowing from the Light; nothing in Nature being so fit to diffuse convey and communicate the good as the Light and its efflux; the Influences whereof are the Holy Ghost in God; and in the World, the Spirit which makes what we call the Air, by vapou∣rising Water, or turning it to vapour.
17. Quaere. What is a Spirit? Answer. It is a Substance as imperceptible as God himself to natural Men, whose knowledge goeth no higher than sense and intelligece 1 Cor. 2. 14. The thing that is, and exists, Exod. 3. 14. (for it is the same as God, who is but a pure Spirit. Joh. 4. 24.) the substance of substances that actu∣ates all substance, and gives it form and Essence. In God alone, and the Soul (to wit, regenerated) it is simple, immaterial, but in this World, where it was at first mixt with the Water, its concrete and material, and hath the three dimensions that all other concretes have, and is that which raiseth up the Water into vapours. Out of it and of Water comes all ma∣terial Substance or Matter; for out of both, this material World was made, Gen. 1. 2. 2 Pet. 3. 5. All things, saith Lucretius, are come from their spiri∣tual and their invisible State, to a visibility and a palpability. By its joyning to Water, which it inspissates to Oyl, then concocts into a Salt, Earth and Body comes to be: Corporification and Terrification, being one and the same thing. And by its separation and freedom from its vehicle, whilst it is clearing it self of the Vapour that holds it; (for it leaves it not wholly; not a spark of pure Spirit being suffered in the World, for then it would inflame it) fire and the destruction of things compacted by it, (for ejus ope totum cum toto compactum est) are still made and come to pass. From the Spirit all encrease, and decrease or corruption of material things, proceed. From the Spirit as Spi∣rit, their Multiplication; Multiplication being but a flux or extension of the first central Spirit infused into the deep, and a propagation made a traduce of the same: and from it as a fire, Quateuus become fire, their decrease and corruption, that is, the separation of that which was compacted. In fine, the stock of all things, of God and of the Creature, being Spirit, and all things coming from a spiritual invisible and unknown state into materiality, Ken, perceptibility, all things agree in substance; and as God is a Spirit,