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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.
133. And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself have I sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not spared your only son, that I will bless and multiply your seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand that is upon the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and through your seed shall all the nations of the earth he blessed; because you have obeyed my voice. And so Abraham returned to his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beer-sheha, and dwelt there (Gen. xxii. 15-19). This is now the seal of faith: when man has wholly given himself up to God, then God swears unto the humanity by himself that he will bless man; that his life's essence shall thenceforward spread forth itself in his power, and grow unto a great tree of divine essence in the wisdom, whose fruit and knowledge shall be infinite and innumerable. As he sware unto Abraham, that out of his body or life's essence many nations should arise; also how his life's essence should possess the gates of the enemies, viz. of the devil, and death, as here he gives a full and pregnant hint concerning Christ and his Christendom; how they should destroy the devil's kingdom, and break down his gate in man: This the faith in God's children is able to do.
234. For so soon as the judgement of the earthly man has been held in the penitent man, so that the soul rejects the will of the evil flesh, viz. the will of the animal soul, and brings it into judgement to the condemnation of death, and resigns itself up wholly unto God; then God swears in Christ Jesus this oath unto the soul, and sets it to be a prince over the enemies, viz. over the proud and haughty devils, even to judge them, and obtains full power over them, and drives them out. 35. After these things Moses mentions how the blessing of Abraham did spread forth itself and he makes a relation of his brother Nahor, how Milcah bare unto him eight sons; from whom great nations did arise, viz. the Assyrians; who indeed did not spring forth out of the ens of faith, viz. in the line of Christ, as Abraham, but out of the natural Adam, upon whom also the blessing of Abraham did light. 1 For the history is so exactly deciphered that a man may see, that God has not only chosen the natural line of Christ, proceeding from Abraham and Isaac, but also the lines of nature in the Adamical tree, which he would also bring together, and manifest himself to them, and they who would believe in God should be engrafted into the line of Christ; that is, those who should be capable of the divine ens in the voice of the Lord, whose will should direct itself to God. 1 Passed or went.
336. As we may see again in this figure, how God has not rejected the kingdom of nature in man, but that he in Christ will deliver it out of the anguish and enmity; and that a man should and must continue in the kingdom of nature; as Abraham when he had finished this offering, he went with his son and two young men to Beer-sheba, and dwelt there. By which the spirit of Moses signifies, that when Abraham had performed this calling in the figure of Christ before the Lord, he returned again unto his natural affairs, viz. unto the doing of this world's business. He went to Beer-sheba, that is, into the toil and labour whereinto Adam has brought us, where a child of God in the cloven and broken nature, viz. in Beer-sheba, must work in God, with teaching, and praying, and also in nature, with the labour of the hand to maintain the outward mao, and follow the wonders of the outward world in the formed word, and help to form, manifest and bring them forth in figure, to the contemplation of the wisdom of God.
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.
133. And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself have I sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not spared your only son, that I will bless and multiply your seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand that is upon the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and through your seed shall all the nations of the earth he blessed; because you have obeyed my voice. And so Abraham returned to his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beer-sheha, and dwelt there (Gen. xxii. 15-19). This is now the seal of faith: when man has wholly given himself up to God, then God swears unto the humanity by himself that he will bless man; that his life's essence shall thenceforward spread forth itself in his power, and grow unto a great tree of divine essence in the wisdom, whose fruit and knowledge shall be infinite and innumerable. As he sware unto Abraham, that out of his body or life's essence many nations should arise; also how his life's essence should possess the gates of the enemies, viz. of the devil, and death, as here he gives a full and pregnant hint concerning Christ and his Christendom; how they should destroy the devil's kingdom, and break down his gate in man: This the faith in God's children is able to do.
234. For so soon as the judgement of the earthly man has been held in the penitent man, so that the soul rejects the will of the evil flesh, viz. the will of the animal soul, and brings it into judgement to the condemnation of death, and resigns itself up wholly unto God; then God swears in Christ Jesus this oath unto the soul, and sets it to be a prince over the enemies, viz. over the proud and haughty devils, even to judge them, and obtains full power over them, and drives them out. 35. After these things Moses mentions how the blessing of Abraham did spread forth itself and he makes a relation of his brother Nahor, how Milcah bare unto him eight sons; from whom great nations did arise, viz. the Assyrians; who indeed did not spring forth out of the ens of faith, viz. in the line of Christ, as Abraham, but out of the natural Adam, upon whom also the blessing of Abraham did light. 1 For the history is so exactly deciphered that a man may see, that God has not only chosen the natural line of Christ, proceeding from Abraham and Isaac, but also the lines of nature in the Adamical tree, which he would also bring together, and manifest himself to them, and they who would believe in God should be engrafted into the line of Christ; that is, those who should be capable of the divine ens in the voice of the Lord, whose will should direct itself to God. 1 Passed or went.
336. As we may see again in this figure, how God has not rejected the kingdom of nature in man, but that he in Christ will deliver it out of the anguish and enmity; and that a man should and must continue in the kingdom of nature; as Abraham when he had finished this offering, he went with his son and two young men to Beer-sheba, and dwelt there. By which the spirit of Moses signifies, that when Abraham had performed this calling in the figure of Christ before the Lord, he returned again unto his natural affairs, viz. unto the doing of this world's business. He went to Beer-sheba, that is, into the toil and labour whereinto Adam has brought us, where a child of God in the cloven and broken nature, viz. in Beer-sheba, must work in God, with teaching, and praying, and also in nature, with the labour of the hand to maintain the outward mao, and follow the wonders of the outward world in the formed word, and help to form, manifest and bring them forth in figure, to the contemplation of the wisdom of God.
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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