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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.
1My soul knoweth not itself because of the mire of sin ; but accounteth itself a strange child before thee, not worthy to desire thy grace. O God in Christ Jesus, thou who for poor sinners' sake didst become man to help them, to thee I complain. The Devil hath poisoned me so that I know not my Saviour ; I am become a wild branch on thy tree. In myself I am become a fool ; I am naked and bare, my shame stands before mine eyes, I cannot hide it ; thy judgement waiteth for me. What shall I say before thee, who art the Judge of all the world ? O merciful God, it is owing to thy love and longsuffering that I lie not already in hell. I lie before thee as a dying man whose life is passing from his lips, as a spark of life going out ; kindle it, O Lord, and lift up the breath of my soul before thee. CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 135 A man must bring a serious mind to this work. If ever he would obtain the divine love, and union with the noble Wisdom of God, he must make an earnest vow in his purpose and mind.
2Beloved Reader, out of love to thee I will not conceal from thee what is made known to me. If thou lovest the vanity of the flesh still, and art not in an earnest purpose on the way to the new birth, intending to become a new man, then leave the above-written words in that prayer unspoken ; else they will turn to a judgement of God in thee. Thou must not take the holy names in vain ; they belong to the thirsty soul. But if thy soul be indeed athirst it shall find by experience what words they are. Beloved Soul; Christ was tempted in the wilderness, and, if thou wilt put on him, thou must go through his whole progress even from his incarnation to his ascension. Though thou art not able 136 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME nor required to do that which he hath done, yet thou must enter wholly into his process and therein die continually from corruption. For the Virgin, the Holy Wisdom, expouseth not herself to the soul except the soul, through the death of Christ, spring up as a new plant, standing in heaven.
3Therefore take heed what thou doest : when thou hast made thy promise keep it ; then Wisdom will crown thee more readily than thou wouldst be crowned. But thou must be sure, when the Tempter cometh to thee with the pleasure and glory of the world, that thy mind reject it. The free will of thy soul must stand the brunt as a warrior and champion. If the Devil cannot prevail against thy soul with vanity, then he cometh against it with its unworthiness and its catalogue of sins. There thou must fight hard, for in this conflict it goeth so terribly with many a poor sinner that outward reason CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 137 thinketh him to be distracted, or possessed by an evil spirit. In this kind of combat heaven and hell are fighting one against the other. Yet a soldier who hath been in the wars can tell how to fight, and can teach another that may be in the like condition. I have set down here for the help of the reader a very earnest prayer in temptation, that he may know what to do if the same should befall him :
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.
1My soul knoweth not itself because of the mire of sin ; but accounteth itself a strange child before thee, not worthy to desire thy grace. O God in Christ Jesus, thou who for poor sinners' sake didst become man to help them, to thee I complain. The Devil hath poisoned me so that I know not my Saviour ; I am become a wild branch on thy tree. In myself I am become a fool ; I am naked and bare, my shame stands before mine eyes, I cannot hide it ; thy judgement waiteth for me. What shall I say before thee, who art the Judge of all the world ? O merciful God, it is owing to thy love and longsuffering that I lie not already in hell. I lie before thee as a dying man whose life is passing from his lips, as a spark of life going out ; kindle it, O Lord, and lift up the breath of my soul before thee. CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 135 A man must bring a serious mind to this work. If ever he would obtain the divine love, and union with the noble Wisdom of God, he must make an earnest vow in his purpose and mind.
2Beloved Reader, out of love to thee I will not conceal from thee what is made known to me. If thou lovest the vanity of the flesh still, and art not in an earnest purpose on the way to the new birth, intending to become a new man, then leave the above-written words in that prayer unspoken ; else they will turn to a judgement of God in thee. Thou must not take the holy names in vain ; they belong to the thirsty soul. But if thy soul be indeed athirst it shall find by experience what words they are. Beloved Soul; Christ was tempted in the wilderness, and, if thou wilt put on him, thou must go through his whole progress even from his incarnation to his ascension. Though thou art not able 136 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME nor required to do that which he hath done, yet thou must enter wholly into his process and therein die continually from corruption. For the Virgin, the Holy Wisdom, expouseth not herself to the soul except the soul, through the death of Christ, spring up as a new plant, standing in heaven.
3Therefore take heed what thou doest : when thou hast made thy promise keep it ; then Wisdom will crown thee more readily than thou wouldst be crowned. But thou must be sure, when the Tempter cometh to thee with the pleasure and glory of the world, that thy mind reject it. The free will of thy soul must stand the brunt as a warrior and champion. If the Devil cannot prevail against thy soul with vanity, then he cometh against it with its unworthiness and its catalogue of sins. There thou must fight hard, for in this conflict it goeth so terribly with many a poor sinner that outward reason CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 137 thinketh him to be distracted, or possessed by an evil spirit. In this kind of combat heaven and hell are fighting one against the other. Yet a soldier who hath been in the wars can tell how to fight, and can teach another that may be in the like condition. I have set down here for the help of the reader a very earnest prayer in temptation, that he may know what to do if the same should befall him :
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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