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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.
130. For the meek love of God embraceth them continually: all the wonders of God are their food; and they are continually in such glory, power, might, majesty, and wonder, as no tongue can express; for they are God's children, God's wonder, God's power and virtue, God's strength, God's honour and glory; they are his praise, they sing his song of praise or Hallelujah in paradise, in the element, and in the centre of nature; there is no awakening of the wrath [there] in eternity; but every spirit in nature is a love desire: they there know no devil, anger, nor hell; there is eternal perfection: whatsoever the will desireth, that is there, and all in power. 31. It is written, The kingdom of God consisteth in power, and not in the earthly substance, for this earthly substance is not from eternity, therefore also it will not be to eternity; if you will conceive of the heavenly substance, you must have a care that you bring a heavenly mind to it, and then the spirit of God will well shew the heavenly substance, it is much easier for the enlightened to conceive of the heavenly substance, than of the earthly: Let not the Reader imagine the thing so difficult. 32. But in the thoughts of his own reason he cannot reach to it; let him leave off, for thereby he attaineth only a glimpse, even as Antichrist hath but a glimpse of the Word of God, and of the doctrine of Christ, and yet strongly supposeth that
2he hath apprehended the Word; but it is a mere foppery, their crying and roaring is mere juggling. 33. If you have not the right hammer you cannot strike the clock that awakeneth the poor captive soul; heaven and earth and every thing lie in man, you need but to use the right hammer, if you will strike his clock and awaken him out of his sleep: your crying aloud will not do it, you will not be able to beat the divine sound into him, if you yourself have it not: But those that have the right hammer, they awaken him indeed: therefore all teachers without God's hammer are but jugglers, hammers for the belly, hammers for the ear, and no hammers for the soul. 34. The soul dwelleth not in the outward spirit; indeed the outward spirit hath insinuated itself as an evil companion into the soul, but hath not the Principle in it wherein the soul dwelleth, but is only a cover and hindrance to it. 35. And so also the Antichrist is but a hindrance to the poor soul; for if the poor soul were not so fast-tied and bound to the crying, which only filleth people's ears in sermons, it would enter into itself, and seek itself; it would endeavour after amendment and abstinence from sin; but now it supposeth that to be holiness which entereth in at the ear, and yet many times there is nothing but dross, filth, and reproach against love and concord in it.
336. What shall a man say? Is not all quite blindfolded and full of hypocrisy; every one endeavoureth after nothing but for the belly; both the shepherd, and the sheep, the superior [or magistrate], and the inferior [or subject]; the spirit of God is very scarce and rare among them, and though they boast much of it, yet it is but a show of holiness and hypocrisy, where the heart knoweth little of the spirit of God, it is a mere notional conjectural knowledge, and matter [thing or confused medley] without spirit. 37. O thou worthy Christianity, behold thyself: O Europe, Asia, and Africa, open your eyes and look upon yourself; do but seek [or examine] yourself. Let every one seek himself, or else it will not be well with him: There is a strong bow bent: Fall into the arms of the archer, and be converted, and find thyself; or else thou wilt be shot away [as an arrow out of a bow]. Be not rocked to sleep by children, but rise and walk upon thy own feet: It is high time, the sleep is at an end: The angel hath sounded his trumpet, do not draw back: Consider what the Revelation of Jesus Christ saith, That those which hang to the whore of Babel [that is, to the confusion], will go along with her into the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone; [viz. the lake of God's anger, which burneth with judgment, famine, and pestilence, which will sweep the whole earth].
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.
130. For the meek love of God embraceth them continually: all the wonders of God are their food; and they are continually in such glory, power, might, majesty, and wonder, as no tongue can express; for they are God's children, God's wonder, God's power and virtue, God's strength, God's honour and glory; they are his praise, they sing his song of praise or Hallelujah in paradise, in the element, and in the centre of nature; there is no awakening of the wrath [there] in eternity; but every spirit in nature is a love desire: they there know no devil, anger, nor hell; there is eternal perfection: whatsoever the will desireth, that is there, and all in power. 31. It is written, The kingdom of God consisteth in power, and not in the earthly substance, for this earthly substance is not from eternity, therefore also it will not be to eternity; if you will conceive of the heavenly substance, you must have a care that you bring a heavenly mind to it, and then the spirit of God will well shew the heavenly substance, it is much easier for the enlightened to conceive of the heavenly substance, than of the earthly: Let not the Reader imagine the thing so difficult. 32. But in the thoughts of his own reason he cannot reach to it; let him leave off, for thereby he attaineth only a glimpse, even as Antichrist hath but a glimpse of the Word of God, and of the doctrine of Christ, and yet strongly supposeth that
2he hath apprehended the Word; but it is a mere foppery, their crying and roaring is mere juggling. 33. If you have not the right hammer you cannot strike the clock that awakeneth the poor captive soul; heaven and earth and every thing lie in man, you need but to use the right hammer, if you will strike his clock and awaken him out of his sleep: your crying aloud will not do it, you will not be able to beat the divine sound into him, if you yourself have it not: But those that have the right hammer, they awaken him indeed: therefore all teachers without God's hammer are but jugglers, hammers for the belly, hammers for the ear, and no hammers for the soul. 34. The soul dwelleth not in the outward spirit; indeed the outward spirit hath insinuated itself as an evil companion into the soul, but hath not the Principle in it wherein the soul dwelleth, but is only a cover and hindrance to it. 35. And so also the Antichrist is but a hindrance to the poor soul; for if the poor soul were not so fast-tied and bound to the crying, which only filleth people's ears in sermons, it would enter into itself, and seek itself; it would endeavour after amendment and abstinence from sin; but now it supposeth that to be holiness which entereth in at the ear, and yet many times there is nothing but dross, filth, and reproach against love and concord in it.
336. What shall a man say? Is not all quite blindfolded and full of hypocrisy; every one endeavoureth after nothing but for the belly; both the shepherd, and the sheep, the superior [or magistrate], and the inferior [or subject]; the spirit of God is very scarce and rare among them, and though they boast much of it, yet it is but a show of holiness and hypocrisy, where the heart knoweth little of the spirit of God, it is a mere notional conjectural knowledge, and matter [thing or confused medley] without spirit. 37. O thou worthy Christianity, behold thyself: O Europe, Asia, and Africa, open your eyes and look upon yourself; do but seek [or examine] yourself. Let every one seek himself, or else it will not be well with him: There is a strong bow bent: Fall into the arms of the archer, and be converted, and find thyself; or else thou wilt be shot away [as an arrow out of a bow]. Be not rocked to sleep by children, but rise and walk upon thy own feet: It is high time, the sleep is at an end: The angel hath sounded his trumpet, do not draw back: Consider what the Revelation of Jesus Christ saith, That those which hang to the whore of Babel [that is, to the confusion], will go along with her into the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone; [viz. the lake of God's anger, which burneth with judgment, famine, and pestilence, which will sweep the whole earth].
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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