Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
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.
115. This is rightly called fetching the youngest brother: for that same incorporated grace in the Promise, effected in Paradise, is the soul's youngest brother, which it hides and covers with sin; and in the beginning of its repentance it leaves him at home by 1 the life of God. 1 Or, with. 16. Therefore says the text of Moses very secretly: He will prove them by the Life of Pharaoh: which is as much as to say in the figure, by the life of God, with whom this youngest son stayed behind. Him must the repenting man bring along with him to the port of grace, or else he must lie three days shut up in prison, till he bring him, as Joseph's brethren did. That is, else must the three Principles in man lie so long in prison in the anger of God, and cannot buy divine food unless they have this their youngest brother with them; that is, the gate, wherein Christ in man, in that same image of the heavenly world's substance which faded in Adam, arises from death, wherein he may have his dwelling place.
217. Thus a man is proved by the life of God when he turns to God, to try whether he turn wholly and altogether to him, and bring this incorporated ground of grace with him, wherein Christ will and shall manifest himself. If not, then says Joseph, that is, Christ, to the soul's essences, You are but spies to the life of God, and search only for the justification of man from the sufferings and merits of Christ. That is, you learn only the history, and take the precious Covenant of God in your mouths, and flatter yourselves with Christ's satisfaction, and remain still only as spies of grace. But that shall nothing avail you or help you. Though likely you may spy out the kingdom of Christ, my anger and righteousness in my zeal and jealousy shall yet hold you in prison with all the three Principles, as long as you bring not the most inward ground of your substance along with you (this is called, setting all the twelve sons of Jacob before Joseph, that is, before Jesus), and fall at his feet with body and soul, inwardly and outwardly, with all your faculties and powers, and yield them up into his grace. 18. For it is not said that they can take the grace, but that they should sink down into grace, that Grace may give itself 'to them; for man's ability to take it is lost: self-will is rent off from God, it must wholly sink down into God, and leave off willing, that God may receive it again into his grace.
319. O Babel! how [home] does this hit you? You are by or before the life of God, with your hypocrisy, but a spy of the grace of God: you do but seek for the gate of grace, and how you might with your own will, without your inward Benjamin, enter into the kingdom of Christ. Yes, you will be outwardly an adopted child of Grace, whose sins are forgiven through the merits of Christ, and yet continue to be Babel and a fable, and will not be a Christian in Christ. You will need pass into heaven, but that will not avail you:Joseph, that is, Christ, holds you imprisoned in the anger of God, both in body and soul, unless you give him Benjamin, viz. the inward ground. And then heaven goes into you, and Christ stands up in you, out of the grave, so that yourself are risen from death: and then your spying and prying has an end. 20. O you high schools [and universities], and all you that will be accounted the ministers of God, and to teach the way of God, and contend and dispute about it; what are you? Look upon yourselves in this figure: you appear to be no other than spies, you always search, and yet you lie still in prison. God will have it so no more; for he himself tries the thoughts of man, and is himself present in all things; his is the understanding, his is the knowledge of the kingdom of God, without him you know nothing.
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.
115. This is rightly called fetching the youngest brother: for that same incorporated grace in the Promise, effected in Paradise, is the soul's youngest brother, which it hides and covers with sin; and in the beginning of its repentance it leaves him at home by 1 the life of God. 1 Or, with. 16. Therefore says the text of Moses very secretly: He will prove them by the Life of Pharaoh: which is as much as to say in the figure, by the life of God, with whom this youngest son stayed behind. Him must the repenting man bring along with him to the port of grace, or else he must lie three days shut up in prison, till he bring him, as Joseph's brethren did. That is, else must the three Principles in man lie so long in prison in the anger of God, and cannot buy divine food unless they have this their youngest brother with them; that is, the gate, wherein Christ in man, in that same image of the heavenly world's substance which faded in Adam, arises from death, wherein he may have his dwelling place.
217. Thus a man is proved by the life of God when he turns to God, to try whether he turn wholly and altogether to him, and bring this incorporated ground of grace with him, wherein Christ will and shall manifest himself. If not, then says Joseph, that is, Christ, to the soul's essences, You are but spies to the life of God, and search only for the justification of man from the sufferings and merits of Christ. That is, you learn only the history, and take the precious Covenant of God in your mouths, and flatter yourselves with Christ's satisfaction, and remain still only as spies of grace. But that shall nothing avail you or help you. Though likely you may spy out the kingdom of Christ, my anger and righteousness in my zeal and jealousy shall yet hold you in prison with all the three Principles, as long as you bring not the most inward ground of your substance along with you (this is called, setting all the twelve sons of Jacob before Joseph, that is, before Jesus), and fall at his feet with body and soul, inwardly and outwardly, with all your faculties and powers, and yield them up into his grace. 18. For it is not said that they can take the grace, but that they should sink down into grace, that Grace may give itself 'to them; for man's ability to take it is lost: self-will is rent off from God, it must wholly sink down into God, and leave off willing, that God may receive it again into his grace.
319. O Babel! how [home] does this hit you? You are by or before the life of God, with your hypocrisy, but a spy of the grace of God: you do but seek for the gate of grace, and how you might with your own will, without your inward Benjamin, enter into the kingdom of Christ. Yes, you will be outwardly an adopted child of Grace, whose sins are forgiven through the merits of Christ, and yet continue to be Babel and a fable, and will not be a Christian in Christ. You will need pass into heaven, but that will not avail you:Joseph, that is, Christ, holds you imprisoned in the anger of God, both in body and soul, unless you give him Benjamin, viz. the inward ground. And then heaven goes into you, and Christ stands up in you, out of the grave, so that yourself are risen from death: and then your spying and prying has an end. 20. O you high schools [and universities], and all you that will be accounted the ministers of God, and to teach the way of God, and contend and dispute about it; what are you? Look upon yourselves in this figure: you appear to be no other than spies, you always search, and yet you lie still in prison. God will have it so no more; for he himself tries the thoughts of man, and is himself present in all things; his is the understanding, his is the knowledge of the kingdom of God, without him you know nothing.
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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