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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.
1has bound the kingdom of heaven to its ceremonies, and will sell it for money; so that the man may but fat himself in this world under the white garment [of its hypocrisy] . 29. The third party gives forth that they have so holy an order that it doth even sanctify and save them, and they, above all others, will be esteemed holy. 30. The fourth party [or sect] will obtain the kingdom of God by their lip-labour, with muchness of speaking, reading, singing, preaching and hearing, and it rebukes, censures and reviles all that will not approve of ; praise, and give diligent attention to its liplabour [and fine conceited long prating]. 31. This party has clothed itself with the white garment, and set itselfupon the letter [or writings] of God's children, and therewith it does so lustily bestir and lay about it, as a beggar that casts stones at the dogs; and sometimes hits a churlish [evil] one, sometimes a quiet [good] one. And he that is hit at makes him hear of it, and then others fall on, pell-mell, and bite and worry him; and there is a continual biting, tearing, confounding, reviling, reproaching, cavilling and jangling about the letter, a mere external work, whereby men [blindly zealous] suppose to serve God, and obtain grace: a very Cainical offering.
232. The Cainical Church is in the outward world, evil and good; it builds, and breaks down; and is only a figure of [or according to] God's love and anger. What one party builds and calls holy, that, another pulls down and reviles. With one mouth it builds, and with another it tears down. What one hypocrite praises, that, another dispraises. And thus there is only a confused [shattered] Babylon, evil and good; a wonder of nature and time. 33. All these run on in their self-contrived and devised orders, and rely upon their received orders. And so they offer the letter of the word, and the work of their own hands, before God; and will needs be outwardly adopted and accepted children before God. God must have respect unto their offering, and forgive them their sins by a word-speaking; as a lord out of favour and clemency freely gives a malefactor his life. Such an unmeasurable matchless heap of grace they have brought into their literal offerings, and into the works of their hands; so that their teaching, and the hearing of them, is accounted for the most holy way wherein salvation is to be had. And whoseoever does not worship and honour this their way with exceeding diligence, and subject himself thereunto, him they reproach, persecute and kill, or else hold him for a heretic.
334. But Abel's children in Christ have far another worship and service of God. They dwell indeed among Cain's children, and do also appear in their orders and offerings; [but] they offer to God a broken and bruised heart, and a humble, contrite mind, in true sorrow for, and conversion from, their committed sins; and with their spiritual will do go out from and forsake all their creatureself-fullness and selfish interests and arrogation, and die to their selfhood in the death of Christ; and become as children, who neither know (nor will) anything, but only their mother which has brought them forth; they cast themselves into her bosom, and they take in patience whatsoever she pleases to do with them. 35. For their internal will is quite mortified to the outward world, with all its glozing show and alluring glory; they account themselves very unworthy before the great grace of God, and their vanity, which the flesh desires, is always in their sight; and to this the inward spiritual will is a deadly opposite enemy, and yet it cannot be wholly separated from it in this lifetime. Their whole course through this world is a mere work of repentance, for their sins and impurity do appear continually in their sight. 36. There is a continual and constant combat in them, of the flesh in the earthly desire against the divine desire, and of the divine desire against the lust of the earthly flesh;
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.
1has bound the kingdom of heaven to its ceremonies, and will sell it for money; so that the man may but fat himself in this world under the white garment [of its hypocrisy] . 29. The third party gives forth that they have so holy an order that it doth even sanctify and save them, and they, above all others, will be esteemed holy. 30. The fourth party [or sect] will obtain the kingdom of God by their lip-labour, with muchness of speaking, reading, singing, preaching and hearing, and it rebukes, censures and reviles all that will not approve of ; praise, and give diligent attention to its liplabour [and fine conceited long prating]. 31. This party has clothed itself with the white garment, and set itselfupon the letter [or writings] of God's children, and therewith it does so lustily bestir and lay about it, as a beggar that casts stones at the dogs; and sometimes hits a churlish [evil] one, sometimes a quiet [good] one. And he that is hit at makes him hear of it, and then others fall on, pell-mell, and bite and worry him; and there is a continual biting, tearing, confounding, reviling, reproaching, cavilling and jangling about the letter, a mere external work, whereby men [blindly zealous] suppose to serve God, and obtain grace: a very Cainical offering.
232. The Cainical Church is in the outward world, evil and good; it builds, and breaks down; and is only a figure of [or according to] God's love and anger. What one party builds and calls holy, that, another pulls down and reviles. With one mouth it builds, and with another it tears down. What one hypocrite praises, that, another dispraises. And thus there is only a confused [shattered] Babylon, evil and good; a wonder of nature and time. 33. All these run on in their self-contrived and devised orders, and rely upon their received orders. And so they offer the letter of the word, and the work of their own hands, before God; and will needs be outwardly adopted and accepted children before God. God must have respect unto their offering, and forgive them their sins by a word-speaking; as a lord out of favour and clemency freely gives a malefactor his life. Such an unmeasurable matchless heap of grace they have brought into their literal offerings, and into the works of their hands; so that their teaching, and the hearing of them, is accounted for the most holy way wherein salvation is to be had. And whoseoever does not worship and honour this their way with exceeding diligence, and subject himself thereunto, him they reproach, persecute and kill, or else hold him for a heretic.
334. But Abel's children in Christ have far another worship and service of God. They dwell indeed among Cain's children, and do also appear in their orders and offerings; [but] they offer to God a broken and bruised heart, and a humble, contrite mind, in true sorrow for, and conversion from, their committed sins; and with their spiritual will do go out from and forsake all their creatureself-fullness and selfish interests and arrogation, and die to their selfhood in the death of Christ; and become as children, who neither know (nor will) anything, but only their mother which has brought them forth; they cast themselves into her bosom, and they take in patience whatsoever she pleases to do with them. 35. For their internal will is quite mortified to the outward world, with all its glozing show and alluring glory; they account themselves very unworthy before the great grace of God, and their vanity, which the flesh desires, is always in their sight; and to this the inward spiritual will is a deadly opposite enemy, and yet it cannot be wholly separated from it in this lifetime. Their whole course through this world is a mere work of repentance, for their sins and impurity do appear continually in their sight. 36. There is a continual and constant combat in them, of the flesh in the earthly desire against the divine desire, and of the divine desire against the lust of the earthly flesh;
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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