origin of the light-world ; and the terrible evil1 must
be a cause of the good, and all is God's.
5. But the light-world is only called God; and
the principle between the light-world and dark
world is called God's anger and fierce wrath. If
this be awakened, as by the devil and all wicked
men, these are then abandoned of the Light and
fall into the dark world.
6. The dark world is called death and hell, the
abyss, a sting of death, despair, self-enmity and
sorrowfulness; a life of malice and falsehood, in
which the truth and the light is not seen and is not
known. Therein dwell the devils and the damned
souls; also the hellish worms, which the Fiat of
death has figured in the motion of the omnipresent
Lord.
7. For hell hath in the darkness the greatest
constellation of the fervent, austere power. With
them all is audible as a loud noise. What rings in
the Light, knocks and thumps in the Dark, as is
to be? seen in the thing men use to strike upon,
that it gives a ringing sound. For the sound is not
the thing; as a bell that is rung is itself not a
sound, but only a hardness and a cause of the sound.
The bell receives the stroke as a knocking, and from
the hard knocking proceeds the ringing sound. The
reason is this, that in the matter of the bell there is
an (element, which, at creation, in the motion of the
omnipresent God, was shut up in the hardness;
as is to be seen in the metalline tincture, if mer
would not be so mad and blind.
8. We recognize, then, that in hell, in the abyss