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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.
126. Therefore, it is good to trust in God; and though the earthly body should always lie in dung, it is but for a little while, and no one knoweth what hour his time in this world is out, and then followeth the judgment, according to his life: Therefore desist from covetousness; it is the eternal root of all evil, and of all folly. A covetous man is the greatest fool on earth, for he devoureth himself, and causeth disquietness to himself, and so bringeth evil upon himself by it: He knoweth not what man it will be who shall possess his covetousness; and many times it is shamefully consumed in whoring: That wherewith one hath destroyed his soul, with the same another is frolic, in another foolery: For it must all come to its effect. But he that trusteth in God hath continually enough: whatsoever he hath he is contented with it, and so he is much richer than the foolish covetous [person], who oppresseth the miserable for money, which cannot prolong his life from death nor preserve him from hell. 27. The honest and virtuous gathereth treasure in heaven, he getteth a new body, wherein there is neither hunger nor thirst, nor frost nor heat, and he hath rest in his conscience, and will eternally rejoice in his treasure: And the covetous fool gathereth an earthly treasure, which he must leave to others; and an evil conscience, and a treasure in the abyss, which will gnaw and eat him eternally.
228. God's blessing never leaveth any that sincerely trust in God, and letteth that go which will not stay: God has wonderful ways, wherewith he feedeth and nourisheth his children; as Daniel in the lions' den; and Elijah under the juniper tree; and the widow ofSarepta in the famine. He that trusteth in God, hath built sure in heaven and on earth. THE EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER Of Death, and of Dying. How Man is when he Dieth; and how it is with him in Death. A Great Gate of Wonders. 1. 1 KNOW that reason will say: Thou hast never tried it [or undergone it], and thou art yet in this world in the outward life, How then canst thou know this? Indeed, dear reason, according to my outward man I must say so too; and I say the truth as to the outward man. 2. But seeing we can live both in God and in this world together; and seeing the soul, if it will know God, must with Christ press into God through a narrow strait gate, through death and hell; therefore we have power to write of the way, and will set it down for a memorial, since we are yet in this world: For God is wonderful, who judgeth [or determineth] in a thing and yet the judgment is not executed in the thing at that instant: and so, though we are in the earthly life, we shall yet speak of the life in death, which we well know [and understand] .
33. For there is no knowledge incomprehensible to the matrix of nature; if the spirit ride upon its wings, it goeth through the three Principles, and if it ride upon its triumphant chariot, may it not then ride through death and hell? Who can hinder it? And may not a soul thus behold the wonders of God; especially when this is the time wherein all wonders shall be revealed [or made manifest] ? 4. We speak not of ourselves alone: The star [of the sixth seal] is appeared which hath broken the seal: why dost thou long stand gazing? Observe it, the time is come, there is no preventing of it more. 5. All that hath a beginning hath an end, that which is included in time goeth with time again into the ether. If we had lived in this world without necessity, and without death, in a pure body without spot or blemish, yet the outward kingdom at the end would have departed from us, and so we should have remained in the heavenly substantiality, after the manner of Enoch and Elijah, as also Moses; yet Moses entered through death into the paradisical life: But Enoch and Elijah were taken up without dying; and there the outward dominion with the spirit of this world was taken from them without dying; which will also be done at the last trumpet; upon which will follow an eternal life, and an eternal death.
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.
126. Therefore, it is good to trust in God; and though the earthly body should always lie in dung, it is but for a little while, and no one knoweth what hour his time in this world is out, and then followeth the judgment, according to his life: Therefore desist from covetousness; it is the eternal root of all evil, and of all folly. A covetous man is the greatest fool on earth, for he devoureth himself, and causeth disquietness to himself, and so bringeth evil upon himself by it: He knoweth not what man it will be who shall possess his covetousness; and many times it is shamefully consumed in whoring: That wherewith one hath destroyed his soul, with the same another is frolic, in another foolery: For it must all come to its effect. But he that trusteth in God hath continually enough: whatsoever he hath he is contented with it, and so he is much richer than the foolish covetous [person], who oppresseth the miserable for money, which cannot prolong his life from death nor preserve him from hell. 27. The honest and virtuous gathereth treasure in heaven, he getteth a new body, wherein there is neither hunger nor thirst, nor frost nor heat, and he hath rest in his conscience, and will eternally rejoice in his treasure: And the covetous fool gathereth an earthly treasure, which he must leave to others; and an evil conscience, and a treasure in the abyss, which will gnaw and eat him eternally.
228. God's blessing never leaveth any that sincerely trust in God, and letteth that go which will not stay: God has wonderful ways, wherewith he feedeth and nourisheth his children; as Daniel in the lions' den; and Elijah under the juniper tree; and the widow ofSarepta in the famine. He that trusteth in God, hath built sure in heaven and on earth. THE EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER Of Death, and of Dying. How Man is when he Dieth; and how it is with him in Death. A Great Gate of Wonders. 1. 1 KNOW that reason will say: Thou hast never tried it [or undergone it], and thou art yet in this world in the outward life, How then canst thou know this? Indeed, dear reason, according to my outward man I must say so too; and I say the truth as to the outward man. 2. But seeing we can live both in God and in this world together; and seeing the soul, if it will know God, must with Christ press into God through a narrow strait gate, through death and hell; therefore we have power to write of the way, and will set it down for a memorial, since we are yet in this world: For God is wonderful, who judgeth [or determineth] in a thing and yet the judgment is not executed in the thing at that instant: and so, though we are in the earthly life, we shall yet speak of the life in death, which we well know [and understand] .
33. For there is no knowledge incomprehensible to the matrix of nature; if the spirit ride upon its wings, it goeth through the three Principles, and if it ride upon its triumphant chariot, may it not then ride through death and hell? Who can hinder it? And may not a soul thus behold the wonders of God; especially when this is the time wherein all wonders shall be revealed [or made manifest] ? 4. We speak not of ourselves alone: The star [of the sixth seal] is appeared which hath broken the seal: why dost thou long stand gazing? Observe it, the time is come, there is no preventing of it more. 5. All that hath a beginning hath an end, that which is included in time goeth with time again into the ether. If we had lived in this world without necessity, and without death, in a pure body without spot or blemish, yet the outward kingdom at the end would have departed from us, and so we should have remained in the heavenly substantiality, after the manner of Enoch and Elijah, as also Moses; yet Moses entered through death into the paradisical life: But Enoch and Elijah were taken up without dying; and there the outward dominion with the spirit of this world was taken from them without dying; which will also be done at the last trumpet; upon which will follow an eternal life, and an eternal death.
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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