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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.
149. This now is the most excellent figure in the whole Bible, that there is nowhere the like to it of any man. And he stands in the figure of an approved tried Christian, who has out- stood all trials: whom the spirit of Christ has lead with himself quite through his sufferings, death, hell, prison, and misery; as the only God, viz. the Great King, set him before him, and tried his wisdom, which he had received in the process [or imitation] of Christ, when he received him with joy, and gives this testimony of him: There is none so wise as you, who would so hiddenly introduce his life in patience, through death and hell, to God, as you. 50. And as God gives him full power over his kingdom, and in his love makes him his helper and assistant, as a council of a king helps and assists a king to govern his kingdom; so also God sets him in his kingdom, and rules by him, and gives him his seal-ring, viz. the humanity and Deity, in the love of Jesus Christ, to his soul; and causes him to ride in the second chariot after him, that is, where God's spirit goes, there always goes such a man after it; and the devil, death and hell dare not touch him any more, for thus he gets power over the devil, death and hell, and also over his mortal flesh and blood, as Joseph over the land of Egypt.
251. And as Joseph quickly withdrew and built the king granaries to lay up provisions; so also such a man, who according to his inward ground sits in the kingdom of God, builds for God his Lord many such human houses, viz. men's souls, in which he lays up in store the divine overplus which God gives him in Christ Jesus, viz. the divine knowledge and wisdom, with good instruction, doctrine and life, so that his doctrine spreads abroad and multiplies as sands in the sea; so innumerable spreading branches his pearl-plant puts forth, that many hundred thousand souls eat thereof, as of Joseph's provision in the famine. 52. And then Poti-pherah's daughter, that is, the daughter of the priest of On, viz. the true Christianity, is given him for a spouse, which he is to cherish and love, and begets of her these two sons (Gen. xli. 50), as always travelling in this way, and then they walk with washed hearts. As Joseph before the time of the famine in Egypt begat of his wife, Manas seh and Ephraim; and so it was represented to him with these names, how God had in the house of his misery caused him to grow great and gave him much. 53- And then also a child of God sets open his chests of treasure when the famine comes, that the anger of God sifts the world, as Joseph did his granaries, and imparted to his fellow twigs therewith out of his chests of treasure, that they perish not in that famine. The Sixty-Ninth Chapter
3How this Famine went through all Lands, and how Jacob sent his sons into the Land of Egypt for Corn, and how they came before Joseph and how he showed himself to them. What is thereby to be understood [Gen. xlii.] 1. THIS forty-second chapter of Genesis, concerning Joseph and his brethren, is a figure, showing how such a converted Christian, which has already entered with Christ into his process, and has now overcome, in the end also forgives and rewards his enemies with bounty, who have brought him into Christ's process with their persecution and wicked devices and counsel. And how also their sins are set before them, and how they are brought into anxiety and necessity, and how in the end, of mere grace they are released from pain and punishment; and how God is so gracious to them upon their conversion, that he not only releases the punishment, but blesses them with his gifts and benefits: as here Joseph did to his brethren. 2. But then next is also represented in this figure, how earnestly and severely God shows himself against sin: as here Joseph against his brethren. And yet God is not earnest to punish the repenting sinner according to the sharpest severity, but he sets himself strictly against the soul in its conscience; that sin may awake and be acknowledged, and that repentance may be the greater, that man in such terror may be humbled for sin, and quite depart from sin, and be angry with it, and utterly hate it; when he knows that sin has so
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.
149. This now is the most excellent figure in the whole Bible, that there is nowhere the like to it of any man. And he stands in the figure of an approved tried Christian, who has out- stood all trials: whom the spirit of Christ has lead with himself quite through his sufferings, death, hell, prison, and misery; as the only God, viz. the Great King, set him before him, and tried his wisdom, which he had received in the process [or imitation] of Christ, when he received him with joy, and gives this testimony of him: There is none so wise as you, who would so hiddenly introduce his life in patience, through death and hell, to God, as you. 50. And as God gives him full power over his kingdom, and in his love makes him his helper and assistant, as a council of a king helps and assists a king to govern his kingdom; so also God sets him in his kingdom, and rules by him, and gives him his seal-ring, viz. the humanity and Deity, in the love of Jesus Christ, to his soul; and causes him to ride in the second chariot after him, that is, where God's spirit goes, there always goes such a man after it; and the devil, death and hell dare not touch him any more, for thus he gets power over the devil, death and hell, and also over his mortal flesh and blood, as Joseph over the land of Egypt.
251. And as Joseph quickly withdrew and built the king granaries to lay up provisions; so also such a man, who according to his inward ground sits in the kingdom of God, builds for God his Lord many such human houses, viz. men's souls, in which he lays up in store the divine overplus which God gives him in Christ Jesus, viz. the divine knowledge and wisdom, with good instruction, doctrine and life, so that his doctrine spreads abroad and multiplies as sands in the sea; so innumerable spreading branches his pearl-plant puts forth, that many hundred thousand souls eat thereof, as of Joseph's provision in the famine. 52. And then Poti-pherah's daughter, that is, the daughter of the priest of On, viz. the true Christianity, is given him for a spouse, which he is to cherish and love, and begets of her these two sons (Gen. xli. 50), as always travelling in this way, and then they walk with washed hearts. As Joseph before the time of the famine in Egypt begat of his wife, Manas seh and Ephraim; and so it was represented to him with these names, how God had in the house of his misery caused him to grow great and gave him much. 53- And then also a child of God sets open his chests of treasure when the famine comes, that the anger of God sifts the world, as Joseph did his granaries, and imparted to his fellow twigs therewith out of his chests of treasure, that they perish not in that famine. The Sixty-Ninth Chapter
3How this Famine went through all Lands, and how Jacob sent his sons into the Land of Egypt for Corn, and how they came before Joseph and how he showed himself to them. What is thereby to be understood [Gen. xlii.] 1. THIS forty-second chapter of Genesis, concerning Joseph and his brethren, is a figure, showing how such a converted Christian, which has already entered with Christ into his process, and has now overcome, in the end also forgives and rewards his enemies with bounty, who have brought him into Christ's process with their persecution and wicked devices and counsel. And how also their sins are set before them, and how they are brought into anxiety and necessity, and how in the end, of mere grace they are released from pain and punishment; and how God is so gracious to them upon their conversion, that he not only releases the punishment, but blesses them with his gifts and benefits: as here Joseph did to his brethren. 2. But then next is also represented in this figure, how earnestly and severely God shows himself against sin: as here Joseph against his brethren. And yet God is not earnest to punish the repenting sinner according to the sharpest severity, but he sets himself strictly against the soul in its conscience; that sin may awake and be acknowledged, and that repentance may be the greater, that man in such terror may be humbled for sin, and quite depart from sin, and be angry with it, and utterly hate it; when he knows that sin has so
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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