seed is now garnered, sweet love invites me to beat out the
other. Thou believest that in the breast, wherefrom the rib was
drawn to form the beautiful cheek whose taste costs dear to all
the world, and in that which, pierced. by the lance, both after
and before made such satisfaction that it overcomes the balance
of all sin, whatever of light it is allowed to human nature to
have was all infused. by that Power which made one and the other;
and therefore thou wonderest at that which I said above, when I
told that the good which in the fifth light is inclosed had no
second. Now open thine eyes to that which I answer to thee, and
thou wilt see thy belief and my speech become in the truth as the
centre in a circle.

"That which dies not and that which can die are naught but the
splendor of that idea which in His love our Lord God brings to
birth;[1] for that living Light which so proceeds from its Lucent
Source that It is not disunited from It, nor from the Love which
with them is intrined, through Its own bounty collects Its
radiance, as it were mirrored, in nine subsistences, Itself
eternally remaining one. Thence It descends to the ultimate
potentialities, downward from act to act, becoming such that
finally It makes naught save brief contingencies: and these
contingencies I understand. to be the generated things which the
heavens in their motion produce with seed and without.[2] The wax
of these, and that which moulds it, are not of one mode, and
therefore under the ideal stamp it shines now more now less;[3]
whence it comes to pass that one same plant in respect to species
bears better or worse fruit, and that ye are born with diverse
dispositions. If the wax were exactly worked,[4] and the heavens
were supreme in their power, the whole light of the seal would be