For as this material system of things may, in a good sense, be said to be an unnatural state, occasioned by the disorders which the fall of angels brought into nature; and as it had no beginning, but from the will of God, commanding the first property of nature to coagulate and compress their disordered kingdom into a new thickness or materiality, only as a remedy to stop, remove, and overcome the evil in nature; so when this remedy shall have had its trial, and the will of God shall no longer will this compressing together; then all that has been brought together by it, must fall back again into its first eternity. And then, without any possibility of being otherwise, every birth in this world, that belongs to the root or center of nature, and has worked with it, must fall down into that eternal abyss of darkness, on which the light of God forever stands, unknown to it. And every life that is born of heaven, and has worked with it, must ascend into the kingdom of God, or abyss of divine glory and majesty. |