43. Concerning the Kingdom of Divinity Beyond the Llght of Grace and Glory, and Concerning the Three-fold Fruit of the Superessential, Contemplative Life

THEN fifthly the kingdom of God beyond all created light is shown to His lovers in a certain boundless, divine light, and this beyond reason in the mind, is introverted into the superessential unity of God, when the three-fold fruit is given to a man, that is, Pure, Boundless Clearness, Incomprehensible Love, and Divine Fruition. Of which the first fruit, that is Boundless Clearness, is the cause of all clarity which is contained in contemplation and in action. And this so sweetly affects the intellect, that immersing itself essentially in that very thing it may be rendered one with it.

Moreover another fruit, that is to say, 213

KINGDOM OF DIVINITV

Incomprehensible Love, flows throughout the whole kingdom of the soul, accordingly as it is capable of its own certain kind of power, and it causes the soul to melt into simple and essential clarity. Further, while this Boundless Clearness and Incomprehensible Love, flow through and penetrate the soul, the soul itself now attains to Fruition, which is the third fruit. Moreover this Fruition is so great and so immense, that both God Himself, the Saints, and all the blessed and those lofty amongst men, are absorbed in it, and immersed in a certain boundless thing, that is, in a kind of ignorance and continual losing of the self. In which nevertheless the chief and highest taste consists in the losing of the self by immersion. Now whosoever is of this nature, will himself be . ideal, and henceforth he will possess his own mind as a king his kingdom, so that the mind itself continually turns and projects itself down wards to the carrying out of all virtues, and thus bears the perfect likeness of the fertile unity of God, which according to the Persons, together with all their gifts, continually flows forth for the necessity of all creatures. And in the same way, in accordance with its own selfsame mind, it will cleave essentially to God, so that it may be transformed into the inexhaustible and infinite Clearness in the same way also as the divine Persons Who are absorbed and immersed by all impulses into the abyss of the divine essence, and are inun dated by Fruition, yet nevertheless, according to the personal distinction in that self-same fertile nature, continually flow forth and work. Thus doubtless, even that ideal man, in the supreme height of his mind, stands between his essence and his powers, that is, between fruition and action, always by the cleaving of himself essentially to God in fruition by defluxion and absorption, and into the darkness of divinity by immersion, which darkness both of God and of all blessed spirits is the supreme blessedness. And thus he will be transformed from clearness to clearness, that is from the created clearness into the uncreated clarity, and this by means of the eternal type which is the Wisdom of God the Father Who is the type of all creatures, whereby all things both corporal and spiritual live. And by the self-same type all creatures flow forth to exist in the created likeness of God, and they receive it. But distinguished and ideal men of this kind are most of all like God, whenever they flow forth outwardly with all virtues, just as does God also with all His gifts, and they remain inwardly in endless fruition, and beyond all gifts are one with God. As many as are of this kind are most clearly and very excellently illuminated and ideal. Which in order that all we too without any failure may attain, may the ever most blessed and adorable Trinity One God grant. Amen.