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Eleven books by a shoemaker of Görlitz who wrote, by his own account, because he could not help it. Ten of them stand here in the seventeenth-century English of John Sparrow, who translated Boehme within a generation of his death and whose prose is itself now four hundred years old; where that English has drifted out of reach, the facing pane carries a modern register — the same text with archaic inflection and spelling normalised by rule, never paraphrased. Nothing is reworded, and where no register appears beside a passage it is because the rules found nothing to change.
The eleventh book is not in English at all, and it is the reason this note exists.
Des trois principes de l'essence divine, printed at Paris in 1802, is the same work as Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, which stands here as the second book — the same twenty-seven chapters in the same order, opening `Du premier principe de l'essence divine` against Sparrow's `Of the first Principle of the Divine Essence`. Its translator was Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who gave the last years of his life to putting Boehme into French, and who has a shelf of his own in this Lycaeum.
That makes a closed circuit inside this archive, and it is worth naming plainly. Saint-Martin translates Boehme. La Iniciación, printed in Montevideo a hundred and forty years later, traces its own descent through Saint-Martin. A reader can therefore follow one thread from a German mystic of 1619, through the French philosopher who carried him into another language, to a Spanish-language monthly of the 1940s that claimed them both — and read every step of it in the original.
The two are shelved as one work rather than two because that is what they are. They are not set as facing panes: an English translation of 1619 and a French translation of 1802 are two independent readings of a lost German original, and pairing them line by line would assert a correspondence neither translator ever claimed.
1THOU Sophister, I know thou wilt accuse me of pride because I saw so far into the Deep. But it is said that you look only upon the wisdom of this world : I do not esteem it or care for it ; it affords me no joy at all. I rejoice at this, that my soul moveth in wonders to the praise of God, so that I know his wondrous works, in which my soul delighteth. Now, since I know the wonders shall I be silent ? Am I not born to this, as are all creatures, that I should open the wonders of God ? Therefore now I labour in my work and another in his ; and thou, proud Sophister, in thine. We stand all in God's field, and we 74 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 75 grow to God's glory and to his works of wonder, as well the wicked as the godly. But every fruit groweth in its own manner : when the mower shall cut it down, then every fruit shall come into its own barn, each receiveth that which is its own. Then the field in its nature, out of which each is grown, shall be made manifest ; there are two centres in eternity, the love and the wrath, and each centre brings forth its own crop. Therefore consider, O man, what you condemn, that you fall not upon the sword of the Spirit of God, and that your work be not consumed in the fire of wrath.
2Thou, Sophister, runnest on wittingly to the Devil, for thine own profit, for thy transitory voluptuousness and honour, and dost not see the open gate which the Spirit showeth thee. If thou wilt not, then it is as was said : We have piped unto you but ye have not danced. We have called you, but you are not come to us ; 76 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME I have been hungry after you, but you have not fed me ; you are not grown in my garden of roses, therefore you are none of my food ; your heart hath not been found in my praise, therefore you are not my food. And the bridegroom passeth by ; then cometh the other, and gathereth what he findeth into his barn. O dear children, if you understood this, how would you tread underfoot the contentions of the Sophisters ! Much consisteth therein which shall hereafter be shown you, so far as we ought ; let none be wilfully blinded, nor be offended by the simplicity of this hand. If we will enter into the kingdom of heaven we must be children, and not cunning and wise in the understanding of this world ; we must depart from our earthly reason and enter into obedience to our eternal first Mother. So we shall receive the spirit and life of our CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 77 Mother, and then also we shall know her habitation.
3No wit of our own attaineth the crown of the mystery of God. It is indeed revealed in the writings of the Saints, but the spirit of this world apprehendeth it not. No Doctors, though they have studied ever so much, have any ability in their own wit to attain the crown of God's hidden mysteries. No one can in his own power apprehend anything of the depths of God and teach it to another ; all are children and scholars in their ABC. Although I write and speak in high fashion thereof, yet the understanding is not my own ; the spirit of the Mother speaketh out of her children what it will ; it revealeth itself in many ways, in one otherwise than in another, for its wondrous wisdom is a deep without measure, and you should not marvel that the children of God have not one manner of speech and word, for each speaketh 78 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME out of the wisdom of the eternal NatureMother whose diversity is infinite. But the goal is the Heart of God ; they all run thither, and herein lies the test whereby you shall know whether the spirit of a man speaketh from God or from the Devil. Hereby we know that we are God's children and generated of God. God is himself the Being of all beings ; and we are as Gods in him, through whom he revealeth himself.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1THOU Sophister, I know thou wilt accuse me of pride because I saw so far into the Deep. But it is said that you look only upon the wisdom of this world : I do not esteem it or care for it ; it affords me no joy at all. I rejoice at this, that my soul moveth in wonders to the praise of God, so that I know his wondrous works, in which my soul delighteth. Now, since I know the wonders shall I be silent ? Am I not born to this, as are all creatures, that I should open the wonders of God ? Therefore now I labour in my work and another in his ; and thou, proud Sophister, in thine. We stand all in God's field, and we 74 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 75 grow to God's glory and to his works of wonder, as well the wicked as the godly. But every fruit groweth in its own manner : when the mower shall cut it down, then every fruit shall come into its own barn, each receiveth that which is its own. Then the field in its nature, out of which each is grown, shall be made manifest ; there are two centres in eternity, the love and the wrath, and each centre brings forth its own crop. Therefore consider, O man, what you condemn, that you fall not upon the sword of the Spirit of God, and that your work be not consumed in the fire of wrath.
2Thou, Sophister, runnest on wittingly to the Devil, for thine own profit, for thy transitory voluptuousness and honour, and dost not see the open gate which the Spirit showeth thee. If thou wilt not, then it is as was said : We have piped unto you but ye have not danced. We have called you, but you are not come to us ; 76 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME I have been hungry after you, but you have not fed me ; you are not grown in my garden of roses, therefore you are none of my food ; your heart hath not been found in my praise, therefore you are not my food. And the bridegroom passeth by ; then cometh the other, and gathereth what he findeth into his barn. O dear children, if you understood this, how would you tread underfoot the contentions of the Sophisters ! Much consisteth therein which shall hereafter be shown you, so far as we ought ; let none be wilfully blinded, nor be offended by the simplicity of this hand. If we will enter into the kingdom of heaven we must be children, and not cunning and wise in the understanding of this world ; we must depart from our earthly reason and enter into obedience to our eternal first Mother. So we shall receive the spirit and life of our CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 77 Mother, and then also we shall know her habitation.
3No wit of our own attaineth the crown of the mystery of God. It is indeed revealed in the writings of the Saints, but the spirit of this world apprehendeth it not. No Doctors, though they have studied ever so much, have any ability in their own wit to attain the crown of God's hidden mysteries. No one can in his own power apprehend anything of the depths of God and teach it to another ; all are children and scholars in their ABC. Although I write and speak in high fashion thereof, yet the understanding is not my own ; the spirit of the Mother speaketh out of her children what it will ; it revealeth itself in many ways, in one otherwise than in another, for its wondrous wisdom is a deep without measure, and you should not marvel that the children of God have not one manner of speech and word, for each speaketh 78 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME out of the wisdom of the eternal NatureMother whose diversity is infinite. But the goal is the Heart of God ; they all run thither, and herein lies the test whereby you shall know whether the spirit of a man speaketh from God or from the Devil. Hereby we know that we are God's children and generated of God. God is himself the Being of all beings ; and we are as Gods in him, through whom he revealeth himself.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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