Chapter LVIII
"All our life is in three: Nature, Mercy, Grace.' The high Might of the Trinity is our Father, and the deep Wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, and the great Love of the Trinity is our Lord"
GOD, the blessed Trinity, which is everlasting Being, right as He is endless from without beginning, right so it was in His purpose endless, to make Mankind.
Which fair Kind first was prepared to His own Son, the Second Person. And when He would, by accord of all the Trinity, He made us all at once; and in our making He knit us and joined us to Himself: by which joining we are kept as clear and as noble as we were made. By the virtue of the same precious joining, we love our Maker and seek Him, praise Him and thank Him, and endlessly enjoy Him. And this is the work which is wrought continually in every soul that shall be saved: which is the Godly Will aforesaid. And thus in our making, God, Almighty, is our Nature's Father; and God, All-Wisdom, is our Nature's Mother; with the Love and the Goodness of the Holy Spirit: which is all one God, one Lord. And in the knitting and the joining He is our Very, True Spouse, and we His loved Wife, His Fair Maiden: with which Wife He is never displeased. For He says: I love you and you love me, and our love shall never be parted in two.
I saw the working of all the blessed Trinity: in which seeing I saw and understood these three properties: the property of the Fatherhood, the property of the Motherhood, and the property of the Lordhood, in one God. In our Father Almighty we have our keeping and our bliss as a result of our natural Substance, which is to us by our making, without beginning. And in the Second Person in skill and wisdom we have our keeping as a result of our Sense-soul: our restoring and our saving; for He is our Mother, Brother, and Saviour. And in our good Lord, the Holy Spirit, we have our rewarding and our reward-giving for our living and our travail, and endless overpassing of all that we desire, in His marvellous courtesy, of His high plenteous grace.
For all our life is in three: in the first we have our Being, in the second we have our Increasing, and in the third we have our Fulfilling: the first is Nature, the second is Mercy, and the third is Grace.
For the first, I understood that the high Might of the Trinity is our Father, and the deep Wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, and the great Love of the Trinity is our Lord: and all this have we in Nature and in the making of our Substance .
And furthermore I saw that the Second Person, which is our Mother as a result of the Substance, that same precious Person is become our Mother as a result of the Sense-soul. For we are double by God's making: that is to say, Substantial and Sensual. Our Substance is the higher part, which we have in our Father, God Almighty; and the Second Person of the Trinity is our Mother in Nature, in making of our Substance: in whom we are grounded and rooted. And He is our Mother in Mercy, in taking of our Sense-part. And thus our Mother is to us in diverse manners working: in whom our parts are kept together. For in our Mother Christ we profit and increase, and in Mercy He re-makes us and restores, and, by the virtue of His Passion and His Death and Uprising, unites us to our Substance. Thus works our Mother in Mercy to all His children which are to Him yielding and obedient.
And Grace works with Mercy, and specially in two properties, as it was shewed: which working belongs to the Third Person, the Holy Spirit. He works rewarding and giving. Rewarding is a large giving-of-truth that the Lord does to him that has travailed; and giving is a courteous working which He does freely of Grace, fulfilling and overpassing all that is deserved of creatures.
Thus in our Father, God Almighty, we have our being; and in our Mother of Mercy we have our reforming and restoring: in whom our Parts are joined and all made perfect Man; and by reward-yielding and giving in Grace of the Holy Spirit, we are fulfilled.
And our Substance is in our Father, God Almighty, and our Substance is in our Mother, God, All-wisdom; and our Substance is in our Lord the Holy Spirit, God All-goodness. For our Substance is whole in each Person of the Trinity, which is one God. And our Sense-soul is only in the Second Person Christ Jesus; in whom is the Father and the Holy Spirit: and in Him and by Him we are mightily taken out of Hell, and out of the wretchedness in Earth worshipfully brought up into Heaven and blissfully joined to our Substance: increased in riches and in nobleness by all the virtues of Christ, and by the grace and working of the Holy Spirit.