Accordingly, the Christian faith, like the prepared earthly aqueous matter, as variously described there, is divided into twelve parts or small articles, according to the number of the twelve apostles, and afterwards into three distinct chief articles, concerning our creation, redemption and sanctification. As stated, a person must undertake to learn these one after another and add them to himself, as it were, gradually and at different times, so that he is not overburdened and, as it were, inundated with learning. Otherwise he might easily become weary of it and be turned away from the faith. For this reason the third chief article, concerning sanctification, can also be divided into seven distinct members or small parts, counting the infallible concluding Amen, and imparted to the person on seven separate occasions, according to the account given in the earthly work. Once this has happened and the person has fully grasped the faith piece by piece, it is then further most necessary for him diligently to preserve within himself the knowledge of faith once received through God’s grace, and carefully guard against its falsification or grievous loss.

And just as it was also stated earlier in the often-mentioned philosophical work that, for this fermentation and multiplication of the one earthly king or completely pure tincture, three pure parts or pieces of its finest, most thoroughly purified gold, refined through antimony, are required, taken and projected with it—not because of any defect in the stone or imperfection in its tincture, but because of the incapacity and weakness of the metals themselves. To say it more clearly: although the tincture or stone has in itself been perfectly prepared, brought to the highest degree and thus made more than perfect, the coarse and imperfect metals, because of their natural weakness and incapacity, cannot draw to themselves or grasp the stone’s or tincture’s, so to speak, angelic perfection and subtlety unless the appropriate requirement mentioned above is also undertaken, in order to make them more capable of receiving it.

What happens and must happen in the chemical work, I say, must also be carefully observed here in our theological work of the human being’s spiritual renewal and heavenly rebirth. Although our heavenly king Jesus Christ, through the complete obedience he rendered to his heavenly Father in our place, has perfectly redeemed us from all impurity and made us God’s children and heirs, because of our inborn weakness and frailty we cannot wholly grasp and receive his saving, entirely divine tincture, or his other heavenly treasures and goods, nor firmly and securely apply and appropriate them to ourselves. If we are to become capable of and share in them, we must attain them through the following three pure parts or pieces required for this purpose by God himself. First and foremost is his holy Word, pure and refined like gold and silver tried seven times in the earthly crucible, Psalms 12 and 18, indeed to be loved above many thousands of pieces of gold, Psalm 119. Secondly, saving faith, a particular gift of God, John 6; 2 Thessalonians 3, which comes through God’s Word, Romans 10, unites human hearts, Acts 5, and is tried in the fire of tribulation. Thirdly, unfeigned love towards God and one’s neighbour, which is also a gift of God and a fulfilment of the law, Romans 13; indeed God himself is and is called love, 1 John 4. Through these three pure parts—the Word, faith and love—when they are rightly and in due order believed and used, Christ the Lord can first work with true power through his divine tincture and heavenly anointing, accomplishing his projection and saving infusion into us poor and imperfect metals, human beings. Without them we can otherwise scarcely grasp him and rightly partake of his tincture.

For immediately the evil Satan, the lying alchemist, appears. He daily steals after the new and regenerated human beings and children of God, especially when they act according to the covenant made with Christ in baptism and, as Saint Paul commands, fight a good fight and retain faith and a good conscience. Through his faithful accomplices—our sinful flesh and blood and the godless, deceitful world—he seeks to cast them into his harmful snares and nets. Alas, often and repeatedly, by God’s permission, he brings them down; for even the righteous falls seven times, Proverbs 24. Just as he acted towards Christ the Lord, our head and prince, assailing and tempting him fiercely immediately after his baptism at the beginning of his holy preaching office, so he still practises his archimical knaveries, cunning and tricks against the Christian Church. First, through want, anguish and suffering, he seeks to move and drive it to doubt God’s Word and gracious promise, just as he tried to persuade Christ the Lord that God was not his friend because he allowed him to suffer hunger and distress so long in the wilderness. If such temptation does not succeed with Christians, he comes rolling in from the other side and would have people trust God beyond what he has promised them in his Word. Thus he also urged Christ to throw himself down from the Temple, for God could still preserve him. If this too fails, he tries a third time, with riches: for the sake of money and property the person should abandon God and his Word, become idolatrous, worship him and honour him as a god. He was not ashamed to propose this openly even to Christ and sought thereby to bring him into apostasy. Yet the faithful God and Father in heaven permits this to befall his own for particular gracious purposes and reasons, so that they may grow and increase in faith, hope, patience and true calling upon God. Through such preliminary exercises or schooling in the cross they are prepared for the coming struggle against the old Adam, learning all the enemy’s devices and how, through God’s grace, to meet him rightly and maintain against him the path of eternal joys.

For our struggle and battle is not against flesh and blood but, as Saint Paul says, against principalities and powers: the rulers of this world who reign in its darkness, the evil spirits beneath heaven. We cannot therefore resist them and their spiritual temptations by our own strength. Rather, following the example of our champion Jesus Christ, we must take up spiritual defences and weapons and strike and overcome our spiritual enemies in faith with God’s Word, the sword of the Spirit, Ephesians 6. We must therefore, according to the command of that Christian warrior, the holy Apostle Paul in Ephesians 6, enter the Holy Spirit’s armoury and take up and put on God’s armour: our loins girded with truth, clothed with the breastplate of righteousness, our feet shod in readiness to advance the Gospel of peace, and armed with the sword of the Spirit, which, as stated above, is God’s Word. Above all, we must take up the shield of faith, with which we can extinguish all the Devil’s fiery arrows. For faith in Jesus Christ is the firm shield through which the Devil can make no hole and with which he cannot wound the heart.

Since, moreover, the governance of the fire in the philosophical work must be maintained diligently throughout, and it must be attended without weariness while the matter is cooked, a brief account has also been given there of the philosophical fire by which the whole work must principally be accomplished: what it properly is and is called, namely an essential, supernatural and also divine fire hidden in the compound, which must be assisted and stimulated by the earthly material fire. So too, the pure divine Word—or, what amounts to the same thing, the Spirit of God, likewise compared to and called a fire in Jeremiah 23—is hidden within us human beings. It was implanted in us by nature, but has been stifled and darkened through nature’s corruption. It must similarly be assisted by another outward fire: constant exercise of godliness and Christian virtues in joy and sorrow, and continual practice and consideration of God’s pure Word, so that the inward divine light of grace in the heart and God’s Spirit may work in us and not go out altogether. It must be tirelessly and unceasingly stimulated, awakened and blown upon. The same may be observed in earthly matters: iron, cold in itself, is powerfully warmed and heated by repeated vigorous motion; and a light or burning lamp, unless continually supplied with oil and the appropriate material little by little, eventually diminishes and goes out. So too, a person gradually declines in his inward fire and spirit and is at last wholly deprived of it unless he continually and unweariedly exercises and keeps God’s Word before his eyes, as stated. One ought and must therefore diligently hear God’s Word, consider it well and constantly exercise oneself in it, as has so often been said and must necessarily be said.