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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.
131. Which hope God fills for him in Christ with the heavenly ens, and takes also herewith his works of nature, and draws them to itself for an eternal wages, which is Christ, with the expressed 2 word, viz. the kingdom of nature, wherein lies the wonders and being of man, kept to God's Great Day of Separation, wherein every one shall reap what he has here sown (Gal. vi. 7). 1 Text, do good. 2 Or outspoken. 32. When we rightly view and consider this history, how God did begin the kingdom of Israel with a servile shepherd, and exalted him before all the potent rich men on earth, even to eternity; and consider that the twelve stocks or tribes of Israel were begotten under a servile yoke, as servants (out of which stock Christ, according to the humanity, was to be born); so we see that all highness of the world, also all art and wit of nature, is foolish in the sight of God, wherewith yet men so boast and esteem their worldly matters, doings or pomp, and their high state, for great things; and yet in the sight of God, are not by far so acceptable as an honest shepherd!
233. A shepherd, in whom the spirit of God works, is more highly esteemed before God than the wisest and most potent in self-wit, without the divine dominion. And we see very well how God erects his kingdom in simple, lowly and mean men, who are not esteemed by the world, but are accounted in the eye of the world no better than herdsmen. As Christ also chose such for his Apostles who were but poor, mean, contemptible people, by whom he manifested the kingdom of Israel in divine power. 34. Where are the learned and worldly-wise men? Again, where are the potent lords, who contemn the simple? where is their might, strength, art, and wit? They must all come, in dust and ashes, and fall down to the simplicity of such shepherds, and bow their hearts in servitude under Christ's yoke, if they will be partakers of the line of these shepherds. Yea, they must be as the maids of Jacob's wives, if they will come to this marriage. 35. For the line of Christ in the beginning was manifested in Abel, a shepherd. So also afterwards, in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses and David, they were all but shepherds when the line of Christ was manifested. There is no potentate, noble, rich, learned, or high worldly-wise, has attained it; but mean people of no account, who have put their trust in God.
336. Where are now the high priests, schools, and universities, who ascribe to themselves and assume the authority and power of these Mysteries, and often tread underfoot the gifts of the Holy Ghost in such shepherds, and laugh at them, and count them fools? Are they not, all of them, Cain, Ishmael, and Esau, of the left line from the kingdom of this world's nature, in the hypocrisy of self-reason? which in the sight of God is not so acceptable as a shepherd. 1 Like unto an honest shepherd. 37. O ye poor blind men in Adam! cast your eyes down from above, and lay yourselves low under the simplicity of Christ, in the line 1 of these shepherds, and look not upon the pomp of art and loftiness, or you will be miserably deceived. If you will be capable of this line, you must not attain it from loftiness, which boasts itself in hypocrisy in this office of a [pastor or] shepherd; but in humility and mean simplicity, where the soul submits itself under Christ's yoke: there will the poor soul, blind as to God, get root in this marriage, and be capable of this line.
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.
131. Which hope God fills for him in Christ with the heavenly ens, and takes also herewith his works of nature, and draws them to itself for an eternal wages, which is Christ, with the expressed 2 word, viz. the kingdom of nature, wherein lies the wonders and being of man, kept to God's Great Day of Separation, wherein every one shall reap what he has here sown (Gal. vi. 7). 1 Text, do good. 2 Or outspoken. 32. When we rightly view and consider this history, how God did begin the kingdom of Israel with a servile shepherd, and exalted him before all the potent rich men on earth, even to eternity; and consider that the twelve stocks or tribes of Israel were begotten under a servile yoke, as servants (out of which stock Christ, according to the humanity, was to be born); so we see that all highness of the world, also all art and wit of nature, is foolish in the sight of God, wherewith yet men so boast and esteem their worldly matters, doings or pomp, and their high state, for great things; and yet in the sight of God, are not by far so acceptable as an honest shepherd!
233. A shepherd, in whom the spirit of God works, is more highly esteemed before God than the wisest and most potent in self-wit, without the divine dominion. And we see very well how God erects his kingdom in simple, lowly and mean men, who are not esteemed by the world, but are accounted in the eye of the world no better than herdsmen. As Christ also chose such for his Apostles who were but poor, mean, contemptible people, by whom he manifested the kingdom of Israel in divine power. 34. Where are the learned and worldly-wise men? Again, where are the potent lords, who contemn the simple? where is their might, strength, art, and wit? They must all come, in dust and ashes, and fall down to the simplicity of such shepherds, and bow their hearts in servitude under Christ's yoke, if they will be partakers of the line of these shepherds. Yea, they must be as the maids of Jacob's wives, if they will come to this marriage. 35. For the line of Christ in the beginning was manifested in Abel, a shepherd. So also afterwards, in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses and David, they were all but shepherds when the line of Christ was manifested. There is no potentate, noble, rich, learned, or high worldly-wise, has attained it; but mean people of no account, who have put their trust in God.
336. Where are now the high priests, schools, and universities, who ascribe to themselves and assume the authority and power of these Mysteries, and often tread underfoot the gifts of the Holy Ghost in such shepherds, and laugh at them, and count them fools? Are they not, all of them, Cain, Ishmael, and Esau, of the left line from the kingdom of this world's nature, in the hypocrisy of self-reason? which in the sight of God is not so acceptable as a shepherd. 1 Like unto an honest shepherd. 37. O ye poor blind men in Adam! cast your eyes down from above, and lay yourselves low under the simplicity of Christ, in the line 1 of these shepherds, and look not upon the pomp of art and loftiness, or you will be miserably deceived. If you will be capable of this line, you must not attain it from loftiness, which boasts itself in hypocrisy in this office of a [pastor or] shepherd; but in humility and mean simplicity, where the soul submits itself under Christ's yoke: there will the poor soul, blind as to God, get root in this marriage, and be capable of this line.
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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