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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.
124. But the spirit of God said by Jacob, when he was about to die: Let not mine honour come in their churches or assemblies; that is, they are of murderous, Cainical minds, and serve me only in a figure, pointing at the future kingdom of Christ; but the spirit of my love and grace is not with them in their sacrifices and worship of God; which love and grace he calls his honour, which he would manifest through the line of Judah, in Christ. 1 Or, tender eyedness. 2 Instructing. 3 Marriage bed. Gen. xlix. 4. 4 A strict, severe man. Text, a sharp, piercing mind. 25. Which honour was, that he should break death in pieces, and destroy hell, and take away the throne of the devil in man. This the Holy Ghost calls his honour; and that was not in the Levitical priesthood, nor among the titulary priests in their churches. But when Leah gave up her will wholly into the will of God, and said, Now will I give thanks unto the Lord (Gen. xxix. 35), who has delivered me from the disgrace of the devil, and of the world, then she bare Judah, viz. the line of Christ.
226. So here now the spirit says, very secretly and covertly under a veil, And she left off from bearing (Gen. xxix. 35). To signify that Christ was the last, who was the end and fulfilling of the Levitical law; under which the spirit signifies that men would not find Christ in the priests' churches, laws, and ordinances of preaching. He would not dwell in their churches with his honour of victory, nor suffer himself and his honour to be tied to the houses of stone, where they exercise a hypocritical show, and have within them only murdering proud hearts, and with the murdering swords of Levi, disgrace and slay one another with words. 27. But in the souls of men, when they give thanks, and praise the Lord in great humility, as Leah did, when she bare Judah, the line of Christ; there will he dwell, and not be at all in the counsel of these priests and Levites, the titulary priests, who contrive only specious glistering ways for their honour and voluptuousness, and forget the true thanksgiving in humility, and honour and love themselves alone; and so give that honour to their feigned or supposed office, which belongs to God alone, and to the love of our neighbour in great humility.
328. We see clearly by this figure that God will not manifest himself in the fleshly love of ourselves. For Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah (Gen. xxix. 30), and would have only Rachel in the beginning. But his seed must continue shut up with her, till Rachel humbled herself before God, and that Jacob prayed for her; to show also that God will not work in the love of ourselves, in that we love and honour one another according to fleshly lust, worldly honour and riches, where men flock together, associate and love one another according to their greatness, state, riches, glory, beauty, bravery and pleasure of this world. 29. But the spirit of God requires humble, faithful and sincere love, where the soul is resigned up into God, and seeks not its own pleasure or self-love; but looks upon the way of God, and joins itself to the humble children, who love God and constantly give him thanks. There God manifests himself and works in them, that they bear fruit to the Lord. 30. Jacob first served seven years for Rachel, which he himself had chosen in his own love, yet she was not given to him for the first seven years' service; but Leah was, unknown to him, laid by him. Jacob desired Rachel as wages for his service: yet seeing the Covenant of the Lord lay in the line of Christ in him, therefore he first received the spiritual wages of the grace 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.
124. But the spirit of God said by Jacob, when he was about to die: Let not mine honour come in their churches or assemblies; that is, they are of murderous, Cainical minds, and serve me only in a figure, pointing at the future kingdom of Christ; but the spirit of my love and grace is not with them in their sacrifices and worship of God; which love and grace he calls his honour, which he would manifest through the line of Judah, in Christ. 1 Or, tender eyedness. 2 Instructing. 3 Marriage bed. Gen. xlix. 4. 4 A strict, severe man. Text, a sharp, piercing mind. 25. Which honour was, that he should break death in pieces, and destroy hell, and take away the throne of the devil in man. This the Holy Ghost calls his honour; and that was not in the Levitical priesthood, nor among the titulary priests in their churches. But when Leah gave up her will wholly into the will of God, and said, Now will I give thanks unto the Lord (Gen. xxix. 35), who has delivered me from the disgrace of the devil, and of the world, then she bare Judah, viz. the line of Christ.
226. So here now the spirit says, very secretly and covertly under a veil, And she left off from bearing (Gen. xxix. 35). To signify that Christ was the last, who was the end and fulfilling of the Levitical law; under which the spirit signifies that men would not find Christ in the priests' churches, laws, and ordinances of preaching. He would not dwell in their churches with his honour of victory, nor suffer himself and his honour to be tied to the houses of stone, where they exercise a hypocritical show, and have within them only murdering proud hearts, and with the murdering swords of Levi, disgrace and slay one another with words. 27. But in the souls of men, when they give thanks, and praise the Lord in great humility, as Leah did, when she bare Judah, the line of Christ; there will he dwell, and not be at all in the counsel of these priests and Levites, the titulary priests, who contrive only specious glistering ways for their honour and voluptuousness, and forget the true thanksgiving in humility, and honour and love themselves alone; and so give that honour to their feigned or supposed office, which belongs to God alone, and to the love of our neighbour in great humility.
328. We see clearly by this figure that God will not manifest himself in the fleshly love of ourselves. For Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah (Gen. xxix. 30), and would have only Rachel in the beginning. But his seed must continue shut up with her, till Rachel humbled herself before God, and that Jacob prayed for her; to show also that God will not work in the love of ourselves, in that we love and honour one another according to fleshly lust, worldly honour and riches, where men flock together, associate and love one another according to their greatness, state, riches, glory, beauty, bravery and pleasure of this world. 29. But the spirit of God requires humble, faithful and sincere love, where the soul is resigned up into God, and seeks not its own pleasure or self-love; but looks upon the way of God, and joins itself to the humble children, who love God and constantly give him thanks. There God manifests himself and works in them, that they bear fruit to the Lord. 30. Jacob first served seven years for Rachel, which he himself had chosen in his own love, yet she was not given to him for the first seven years' service; but Leah was, unknown to him, laid by him. Jacob desired Rachel as wages for his service: yet seeing the Covenant of the Lord lay in the line of Christ in him, therefore he first received the spiritual wages of the grace 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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