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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.
134. There belongeth great earnestness to prayer: for praying is calling upon God: to entreat him, to speak with him, and to go out of the house of sin, and enter into the house of God: and if the devil offers to hinder it, then storm his hell: Set thyself against him, as he setteth himself against thee, and then thou shalt find what it is which is here told thee: if he opposes strongly, then oppose thou the more strongly; thou hast, in Christ, far greater power than he. 35. And if you doubt the grace of God, you sin greatly, for he is always merciful, and there is no other will in him at all but to be merciful: He cannot do otherwise, his arms are spread abroad day and night towards a poor sinner. And when any cometh [with the lost son to the Father], and so stormeth hell, then there is amongst the angels of God, greater joy for such an one, than for ninety-nine righteous that need not that; as Christ himself teacheth us. 36. With such a devil as covereth the heart of man, there is no better course to be taken with him, than not to dispute with him at all about the multitude of sins; but to wrap up all sins on a heap ( though they were as many as the sand on the sea-shore), and throw them on the devil's shoulders, and to say in his heart, Behold, thou devil, thou art the cause of all this evil, I leave my sins to thee, but I take the mercy of God and the death of Christ to myself, therein will I roll myself, devour me if thou canst.
237. Do but fix thy trust and confidence upon the promise of Christ: and let your storming be always grounded in the death of Christ, in his sufferings and wounds, and in the love of Christ: Dispute no farther about your sins, for the devil involves himself therein, and upbraideth thee for thy sins, that thou mightest despair. 38. Make trial in this manner, and you will quickly see and feel another man, with another sense and will [in you] : We speak as we know, and have found by experience: We speak not by way of opinion, or as an historical relation, but that which we have a ground for, for a soldier knoweth how it is in the wars: but he that hath not tried and been present, always thinketh otherwise than it is. This we mention out of love, for your learning and instruction, as a spirit which speaketh how it hath gone with it, for an example to others, to try if any would follow us, and then they would find how true it is. The Gates of the Deep Ground concerning Man. 39. Since the beginning of the world there hath been a controversy about this: because these gates were shut with Adam, and we have been held captive in darkness: but seeing God hath favoured us, and opened them to us, and also hath given us an earnest will to write it down, we shall therefore do it, and give thanks for it to God the Father in Christ Jesus in eternity, who hath redeemed us out of the darkness of death. 40. Therefore when we would know what man
3is, and why there is so great difference and variety amongst men, so that one doth not as another doth and that one differeth in form and feature from another; we must set before us the most inward ground of his [incarnation or] becoming man, and consider it, and then we shall find all. 41. For when a man that is regenerated in God, so that he seeth the light, beginneth to search out his original, then the spirit of the soul searcheth in all the Three Principles, what he is in each of them; for we know it, and cannot say otherwise, than that we, in the image of the spirit, and also of the body, in all the Three Principles, have but one only rule [or dominion] in us; but that dominion is in three sources [or qualities] : the spirit and the body are driven according to each Principle, and what Principle it is which getteth the upper hand in man, so that man with his will inclineth to it, according to that he performeth his work, and the other [Principles] do but cleave to it, not having sufficient power. 42. But when we will speak of the image, we must see what it is in the ground thereof. For we are sown as a seed in a field, into the matrix [womb] : Now, consider what precedeth that: Nothing but a longing will and desire of man and woman to copulate, and yet the fruit is not always desired, of which we have an example in whores and whoremongers, also indeed in the state of marriage. 4 3. Now the question is, What is that which
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.
134. There belongeth great earnestness to prayer: for praying is calling upon God: to entreat him, to speak with him, and to go out of the house of sin, and enter into the house of God: and if the devil offers to hinder it, then storm his hell: Set thyself against him, as he setteth himself against thee, and then thou shalt find what it is which is here told thee: if he opposes strongly, then oppose thou the more strongly; thou hast, in Christ, far greater power than he. 35. And if you doubt the grace of God, you sin greatly, for he is always merciful, and there is no other will in him at all but to be merciful: He cannot do otherwise, his arms are spread abroad day and night towards a poor sinner. And when any cometh [with the lost son to the Father], and so stormeth hell, then there is amongst the angels of God, greater joy for such an one, than for ninety-nine righteous that need not that; as Christ himself teacheth us. 36. With such a devil as covereth the heart of man, there is no better course to be taken with him, than not to dispute with him at all about the multitude of sins; but to wrap up all sins on a heap ( though they were as many as the sand on the sea-shore), and throw them on the devil's shoulders, and to say in his heart, Behold, thou devil, thou art the cause of all this evil, I leave my sins to thee, but I take the mercy of God and the death of Christ to myself, therein will I roll myself, devour me if thou canst.
237. Do but fix thy trust and confidence upon the promise of Christ: and let your storming be always grounded in the death of Christ, in his sufferings and wounds, and in the love of Christ: Dispute no farther about your sins, for the devil involves himself therein, and upbraideth thee for thy sins, that thou mightest despair. 38. Make trial in this manner, and you will quickly see and feel another man, with another sense and will [in you] : We speak as we know, and have found by experience: We speak not by way of opinion, or as an historical relation, but that which we have a ground for, for a soldier knoweth how it is in the wars: but he that hath not tried and been present, always thinketh otherwise than it is. This we mention out of love, for your learning and instruction, as a spirit which speaketh how it hath gone with it, for an example to others, to try if any would follow us, and then they would find how true it is. The Gates of the Deep Ground concerning Man. 39. Since the beginning of the world there hath been a controversy about this: because these gates were shut with Adam, and we have been held captive in darkness: but seeing God hath favoured us, and opened them to us, and also hath given us an earnest will to write it down, we shall therefore do it, and give thanks for it to God the Father in Christ Jesus in eternity, who hath redeemed us out of the darkness of death. 40. Therefore when we would know what man
3is, and why there is so great difference and variety amongst men, so that one doth not as another doth and that one differeth in form and feature from another; we must set before us the most inward ground of his [incarnation or] becoming man, and consider it, and then we shall find all. 41. For when a man that is regenerated in God, so that he seeth the light, beginneth to search out his original, then the spirit of the soul searcheth in all the Three Principles, what he is in each of them; for we know it, and cannot say otherwise, than that we, in the image of the spirit, and also of the body, in all the Three Principles, have but one only rule [or dominion] in us; but that dominion is in three sources [or qualities] : the spirit and the body are driven according to each Principle, and what Principle it is which getteth the upper hand in man, so that man with his will inclineth to it, according to that he performeth his work, and the other [Principles] do but cleave to it, not having sufficient power. 42. But when we will speak of the image, we must see what it is in the ground thereof. For we are sown as a seed in a field, into the matrix [womb] : Now, consider what precedeth that: Nothing but a longing will and desire of man and woman to copulate, and yet the fruit is not always desired, of which we have an example in whores and whoremongers, also indeed in the state of marriage. 4 3. Now the question is, What is that which
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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