Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
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.
1yourself, with your whole reason, and all your thoughts, into the will of God; and although your heart and the devil say utterly, No, yet make your outward reason dead, and enter in with force, and continue steadfast: Look not back, as Lot's wife did, who was turned again into sulphur, and into a pillar of salt, but stand fast: Let the devil, and the spirit of this world, and also thy heart, with flesh and blood, struggle [what they will], yet give no place to reason; when it saith, thou art without God, then say, No, / am in God, I am in heaven in him, I will not in eternity depart from him: The devil may keep my sins, and the world this body, yet I live in the will of God; his life shall be also my life, and his will shall be my will: I will be dead as to my reason, that HE may live in me: All my doing shall be his doing: Give thyself up to him, in all thy purposes: Whatsoever thou takest in hand, commit it to his pleasure and government, that all may be done in [or according to] his will: Behold ! if thou dost thus, all evil lusts will depart from thee; for thou standest fast in the presence of God, and the Virgin of his wisdom leadeth thee, and openeth to thee the way to eternal life, she warneth thee of the evil or false ways, she always driveth thee on to abstinence or amendment, and submission or resignation.
256. But, that you have so great obstacles and hindrances of doubting in this way, is [caused by] the strife of the soul against the devil, who layeth himself in the way as a filthy swine; therefore cast thy sins upon his neck, and do not doubt; and if thou canst not leave that [doubting], then reach with thy soul into God, for God is in thee: Christ hath opened the gates into his Father; do but enter in, let nothing keep thee back; and though heaven and earth, and all the creatures, should say thou canst not, believe them not, go forward, and thou wilt suddenly get in; and as soon as thou comest in, thou gettest a new body on to the soul, that is, the body of Christ, which is God and man; and thou wilt afterwards have ease and refreshment in thy heart; thou wilt get one that will draw thee, and set the falsehood of the world before thy eyes, and warn thee of it.
357. Therefore, observe, there are many that think with themselves, saying, I will pray to God to take away my sins from me, that I may be released of my old sins: and when it cometh to pass that they attain the love of God, they think the old sins are passed away and forgiven; [saying], I may now sin anew, I will afterwards repent once again, and cast the abomination away from me: Indeed that were a good way, if the purpose were at hand: But hear, when thou goest out from the love of God, then thou hast all thy sins, which thou hast committed all thy life long, upon thy neck again: for thou turnest back again into the house of sin, and forsakest God; thou goest out from God into the kingdom of the devil, and thy works follow thee whithersoever thou goest: The purpose cannot help you, unless you go on in your purpose.
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.
1yourself, with your whole reason, and all your thoughts, into the will of God; and although your heart and the devil say utterly, No, yet make your outward reason dead, and enter in with force, and continue steadfast: Look not back, as Lot's wife did, who was turned again into sulphur, and into a pillar of salt, but stand fast: Let the devil, and the spirit of this world, and also thy heart, with flesh and blood, struggle [what they will], yet give no place to reason; when it saith, thou art without God, then say, No, / am in God, I am in heaven in him, I will not in eternity depart from him: The devil may keep my sins, and the world this body, yet I live in the will of God; his life shall be also my life, and his will shall be my will: I will be dead as to my reason, that HE may live in me: All my doing shall be his doing: Give thyself up to him, in all thy purposes: Whatsoever thou takest in hand, commit it to his pleasure and government, that all may be done in [or according to] his will: Behold ! if thou dost thus, all evil lusts will depart from thee; for thou standest fast in the presence of God, and the Virgin of his wisdom leadeth thee, and openeth to thee the way to eternal life, she warneth thee of the evil or false ways, she always driveth thee on to abstinence or amendment, and submission or resignation.
256. But, that you have so great obstacles and hindrances of doubting in this way, is [caused by] the strife of the soul against the devil, who layeth himself in the way as a filthy swine; therefore cast thy sins upon his neck, and do not doubt; and if thou canst not leave that [doubting], then reach with thy soul into God, for God is in thee: Christ hath opened the gates into his Father; do but enter in, let nothing keep thee back; and though heaven and earth, and all the creatures, should say thou canst not, believe them not, go forward, and thou wilt suddenly get in; and as soon as thou comest in, thou gettest a new body on to the soul, that is, the body of Christ, which is God and man; and thou wilt afterwards have ease and refreshment in thy heart; thou wilt get one that will draw thee, and set the falsehood of the world before thy eyes, and warn thee of it.
357. Therefore, observe, there are many that think with themselves, saying, I will pray to God to take away my sins from me, that I may be released of my old sins: and when it cometh to pass that they attain the love of God, they think the old sins are passed away and forgiven; [saying], I may now sin anew, I will afterwards repent once again, and cast the abomination away from me: Indeed that were a good way, if the purpose were at hand: But hear, when thou goest out from the love of God, then thou hast all thy sins, which thou hast committed all thy life long, upon thy neck again: for thou turnest back again into the house of sin, and forsakest God; thou goest out from God into the kingdom of the devil, and thy works follow thee whithersoever thou goest: The purpose cannot help you, unless you go on in your purpose.
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.
No commentary for this page.