THE FIFTH POINT 81
many a child is baptized in the wrath of God, for
which the parents are to blame. An evil tree bears
evil fruit, says Christ.
6. And though He is come into this world to
save what was lost, yet it depends also on the
essence of that which will let itself be helped. For
an animal-man may attain the image [of God], if
he turn round and suffer the Word that became
man to draw him. If not, then he remains in his
animal essence an evil beast.
7. But we are not to suppose that baptism lays
the first foundation of the human essence, and is
wholly the first enkindling cause of the divine fire.
No, that is not so; for a child becomes through
the parents' essence a spirit, as also flesh and
blood, with espousal of the constellation of the spirit
majoris mundi.
8. At the time when a child in the womb has
attained to life, then immediately divine or hellish
essence glimmers from the primal fount and origin.
9. And if but a small spark of the divine essence
be active, the child is susceptible of baptism. And
though it should die unbaptized, yet the spark is
in God's Mystery, and glimmers in God's king-
dom, and is kindled in the fire of God. For it
dies in the Mysterium of the Father, and glimmers
up in the Mysterium of the Son who became man.
10. The parents9 baptism and covenant is its
bantism and covenant. The reconciliation has