ame Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Soul."[49]

On one occasion the Lord showed Fox the nature of things that are in
the human heart--"as the nature of dogs, swine, vipers, etc."[50] So,
too, Boehme saw that there are many kinds of wild beast in man's
nature--the lion, the wolf, the dog, the fox, and the serpent.[51] Fox
frequently speaks of the two "seeds"--the Seed of God or the Seed of
Christ and the seed of the serpent--and the victory of life in the
Spirit consists in having the Seed of God conquer the seed of the
serpent, or, as Fox {226} often expresses it, having "the Seed of God
bruise the serpent's head," or having "the Seed of God atop of the
devil and all his works"; or having "the Seed reign."[52] This
phraseology runs throughout Boehme's writings. The two "seeds" are
everywhere in evidence, and "the Treader on the serpent" is the
frequent name for Christ and for the victorious soul. God showed Adam,
Boehme says, how "the Treader on the serpent" should once again be
brought with virtue and power up into the Paradise of God, and live
anew by the Word of God.[53]

Fox, in the account of his first great transforming opening in 1647,
says: "I knew God by revelation as one who hath the key doth open."[54]
This is a frequent figure in Boehme for a first-hand experience.
"Where is Paradise to be found?" he asks. "Is it far away or is it
near? One person cannot lend the key to another. Every one must
unlock it with his own key or else he cannot enter,"[55] and again he
describes that "surpassing joy of the new regeneration," when the soul
"gets the keys of the kingdom of heaven and may open for itself."[56]

Fox's "openings" about university-trained ministers and his references
to "stone churches," or "churches of stone and mortar," have many
parallels in Boehme. Dinah of the Old Testament, for example, is
"nothing else but a figure of our stone churches and our colleges with
their ministers!" and Jacob's concubine, again, "signifieth nothing
else but the stone churches in which God's word and testament are
handled."[57]

Finally, Fox's great vision of an ocean of Darkness and an ocean of
Light, while no doubt a real experience and expressed in his own words,
is profoundly like Boehme's fundamental insight that there are two
world-principles of Light and Darkness, and that Light is, in the end,
victorious over Darkness.[58]

No attempt has been made to gather an exhaustive set {227} of parallels
betw