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.
1the relating of this does not fully satisfy a soul; for the devils believe and know it all, and what has been discovered and spoken from God by words since the beginning of the world, and tremble: and so may we if we learn not the mystery, signified in and by the history, and feel that Christ is born in us, in a pure, clean, chaste heart, and understand the knowledge of Christ and him crucified, than which the Apostle Paul desired not to know anything else, among the Corinthians; this was not the bare knowledge of the history, for he said in a certain place, though we once knew Christ according to the flesh: as they did that conversed with him upon earth, yet now know we him so no more; then, how did he know him, but in the spirit, in the mystical knowledge? Infinite are the mysteries mentioned in the Scriptures concerning God, angels, men, the world, eternity, time, the creation, fall, sin, corruption, the curse, misery, death, judgment, hell, devils, damnation: Christ, redemption, justification, salvation, free grace, free will, resurrection; Paradise: the Holy Ghost, sanctification, restitution, blessedness, eternal life and glory. These all concern the soul which
2is the eternal part of man, which no other books do teach the assured knowledge of, but the Scriptures. How should we therefore esteem that which teaches things so satisfactory, and necessary, for the soul to learn, to eschew, or attain, in reference to eternity. Other writers have written from observations made upon experience by the outward senses from external objects, but that skill goes no further than the shell and cover of things, the spirit in nature being invisible to the outward eyes as well as the divine Spirit: they that wrote from the Holy Spirit had inward senses, for it is written, That which we have seen with our eyes, 1 which we have heard with our ears, 1 and which our hands 1 have handled of the word of life, declare we unto you; they also saw with their eyes, things unutterable, such as no eye 2 hath seen, or ear 2 heard, or hath entered into the heart of man 2 to conceive, yet things which God hath undoubtedly prepared for them that love him: some of which that are unutterable, have been declared and left recorded for us by the holy men, and nowhere but in the Scriptures, which hath stirred up the industry of some to collect and transmit those writings to posterity: and in the time of the Apostles men were diligent in reading the Old Testament, which were the only Scriptures then, and our Saviour bids the Jews search them, saying, For in them ye think to have eternal life, and they are they that testify of me (John v. 39).
31 Inward, spiritual. 2 Outward, carnal. A little after, the Bereans searched the Scriptures daily to see whether what Paul taught were so or no: Now if any other books would have informed them of those things, they would have sought in those also; but we read not that they did so. This also adds to their excellency, that he who was not behind the chiefest Apostles tells Timothy who was also an Evangelist, and had known the Scriptures as a child, that they are able to make him wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus: how precious is that which can make us wise to salvation: this hath been said of the Old Testament: but concerning the epistles of Paul, the Apostle Peter testifies of them, that some do wrest them as they do also the other Scriptures: and the worth of the New Testament further appears, in that it was written by the Apostles, to whom God spake by his Son, and therein have revealed him, of whom all the Prophets of old have testified; and therein also are expressed some of the mysteries that have been hid since the world began, and in this it is paramount to all other books: and this has provoked the industry of the most able learned men for many hundreds of years to translate them into several languages out
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.
1the relating of this does not fully satisfy a soul; for the devils believe and know it all, and what has been discovered and spoken from God by words since the beginning of the world, and tremble: and so may we if we learn not the mystery, signified in and by the history, and feel that Christ is born in us, in a pure, clean, chaste heart, and understand the knowledge of Christ and him crucified, than which the Apostle Paul desired not to know anything else, among the Corinthians; this was not the bare knowledge of the history, for he said in a certain place, though we once knew Christ according to the flesh: as they did that conversed with him upon earth, yet now know we him so no more; then, how did he know him, but in the spirit, in the mystical knowledge? Infinite are the mysteries mentioned in the Scriptures concerning God, angels, men, the world, eternity, time, the creation, fall, sin, corruption, the curse, misery, death, judgment, hell, devils, damnation: Christ, redemption, justification, salvation, free grace, free will, resurrection; Paradise: the Holy Ghost, sanctification, restitution, blessedness, eternal life and glory. These all concern the soul which
2is the eternal part of man, which no other books do teach the assured knowledge of, but the Scriptures. How should we therefore esteem that which teaches things so satisfactory, and necessary, for the soul to learn, to eschew, or attain, in reference to eternity. Other writers have written from observations made upon experience by the outward senses from external objects, but that skill goes no further than the shell and cover of things, the spirit in nature being invisible to the outward eyes as well as the divine Spirit: they that wrote from the Holy Spirit had inward senses, for it is written, That which we have seen with our eyes, 1 which we have heard with our ears, 1 and which our hands 1 have handled of the word of life, declare we unto you; they also saw with their eyes, things unutterable, such as no eye 2 hath seen, or ear 2 heard, or hath entered into the heart of man 2 to conceive, yet things which God hath undoubtedly prepared for them that love him: some of which that are unutterable, have been declared and left recorded for us by the holy men, and nowhere but in the Scriptures, which hath stirred up the industry of some to collect and transmit those writings to posterity: and in the time of the Apostles men were diligent in reading the Old Testament, which were the only Scriptures then, and our Saviour bids the Jews search them, saying, For in them ye think to have eternal life, and they are they that testify of me (John v. 39).
31 Inward, spiritual. 2 Outward, carnal. A little after, the Bereans searched the Scriptures daily to see whether what Paul taught were so or no: Now if any other books would have informed them of those things, they would have sought in those also; but we read not that they did so. This also adds to their excellency, that he who was not behind the chiefest Apostles tells Timothy who was also an Evangelist, and had known the Scriptures as a child, that they are able to make him wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus: how precious is that which can make us wise to salvation: this hath been said of the Old Testament: but concerning the epistles of Paul, the Apostle Peter testifies of them, that some do wrest them as they do also the other Scriptures: and the worth of the New Testament further appears, in that it was written by the Apostles, to whom God spake by his Son, and therein have revealed him, of whom all the Prophets of old have testified; and therein also are expressed some of the mysteries that have been hid since the world began, and in this it is paramount to all other books: and this has provoked the industry of the most able learned men for many hundreds of years to translate them into several languages out
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.