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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.
146. But let this be said to the children of God: that the churches hurt no man, and they were instituted out of a good meaning by the first Christian power; and were very good and profitable, and they need not be thrown down and demolished, if Reuben would but leave his whoredom, whereby he reproaches them; that her ministers might be renewed, and not, without the unction of the Holy Ghost, give forth that they are the ministers of this concubine of God, as is now done only for temporary honour and pleasure's sake, which are as profitable to the Church as a fifth wheel is to a wagon: unless they go with five wheels to their wagon, where the fifth moves in the air, and enters with their contention into the abyss of hell. 47. The stone houses of the churches have no greater holiness in them than other houses, for they are built of stone and such materials as other houses are, and God is no more powerful in them than in other houses. But the Church or congregation that enters thereinto, and there meets together, and there bind themselves with their prayer into one body in Christ, whose type and resemblance the Church is, that [Church] has the holy temple of JESUS CHRIST in it. 48. Their songs of praise and thanksgiving are the cradle of the child JESUS CHRIST, in which the child Jesus is rocked with unanimous consent in the hearts of men, and not within the bounds of the church which is a dumb and dead thing.
249. Its ministers are no more than all other men; but the power and virtue that is poured forth in the unction of the Holy Ghost has the power in the offering, and is the key. 50. Whosoever will worthily enter into the church, must bring with him the temple of Jesus Christ within him, or at least he must fully take such a resolution and purpose that he will bring it out with him in his heart; otherwise his going in and coming out is but a committing of spiritual seeming holy, but indeed hypocritical, whoredom; and [he] is no whit the holier when he comes out, and had as good have been standing in the market, showing his pride in his fine clothes, for the people to see him: and then perhaps he had not caused many honest hearts to err. 51. This we had a purpose to signify by the knowing of this figure: That a Christian should not look upon the show of churches, but consider that the Church is but a type and resemblance of Christ; and that he is not a Christian that enters into the resemblance, and approves of that; but he is a Christian that wholly gives himself up into Christ's incarnation, suffering, and death, and dies to his hypocrisy in the death of Christ, and rises from the death of Christ
3in a new will and obedience, and who, according to his inward ground, is and lives in Christ, who himself becomes the temple of Christ, wherein Christ works with his power and virtue, and thereby kills sin in the flesh. Such a one is a Christian in Christ, and may rightly enter into the resemblance of Christ, and exercise his Christianity therein. Such a one will hear God's word, and keep and ponder it in his heart. 52. And though a cow's lowing, in its sound, should declare the name of God, yet Christ preaches in himself: but none that is dead can awaken another that is dead, nor one that is blind show the way to another, but both wilfall into the pit, says Christ (Matt. xv. 14).
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.
146. But let this be said to the children of God: that the churches hurt no man, and they were instituted out of a good meaning by the first Christian power; and were very good and profitable, and they need not be thrown down and demolished, if Reuben would but leave his whoredom, whereby he reproaches them; that her ministers might be renewed, and not, without the unction of the Holy Ghost, give forth that they are the ministers of this concubine of God, as is now done only for temporary honour and pleasure's sake, which are as profitable to the Church as a fifth wheel is to a wagon: unless they go with five wheels to their wagon, where the fifth moves in the air, and enters with their contention into the abyss of hell. 47. The stone houses of the churches have no greater holiness in them than other houses, for they are built of stone and such materials as other houses are, and God is no more powerful in them than in other houses. But the Church or congregation that enters thereinto, and there meets together, and there bind themselves with their prayer into one body in Christ, whose type and resemblance the Church is, that [Church] has the holy temple of JESUS CHRIST in it. 48. Their songs of praise and thanksgiving are the cradle of the child JESUS CHRIST, in which the child Jesus is rocked with unanimous consent in the hearts of men, and not within the bounds of the church which is a dumb and dead thing.
249. Its ministers are no more than all other men; but the power and virtue that is poured forth in the unction of the Holy Ghost has the power in the offering, and is the key. 50. Whosoever will worthily enter into the church, must bring with him the temple of Jesus Christ within him, or at least he must fully take such a resolution and purpose that he will bring it out with him in his heart; otherwise his going in and coming out is but a committing of spiritual seeming holy, but indeed hypocritical, whoredom; and [he] is no whit the holier when he comes out, and had as good have been standing in the market, showing his pride in his fine clothes, for the people to see him: and then perhaps he had not caused many honest hearts to err. 51. This we had a purpose to signify by the knowing of this figure: That a Christian should not look upon the show of churches, but consider that the Church is but a type and resemblance of Christ; and that he is not a Christian that enters into the resemblance, and approves of that; but he is a Christian that wholly gives himself up into Christ's incarnation, suffering, and death, and dies to his hypocrisy in the death of Christ, and rises from the death of Christ
3in a new will and obedience, and who, according to his inward ground, is and lives in Christ, who himself becomes the temple of Christ, wherein Christ works with his power and virtue, and thereby kills sin in the flesh. Such a one is a Christian in Christ, and may rightly enter into the resemblance of Christ, and exercise his Christianity therein. Such a one will hear God's word, and keep and ponder it in his heart. 52. And though a cow's lowing, in its sound, should declare the name of God, yet Christ preaches in himself: but none that is dead can awaken another that is dead, nor one that is blind show the way to another, but both wilfall into the pit, says Christ (Matt. xv. 14).
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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