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.
1their cup; and then reproach they him for a wicked person, who has stolen their cup and authority from them, and run after him and would murder him, and damn him to temporal and eternal death, and reproach him without ceasing for a treacherous person, who has stolen their cup. 6. That is, when a true Christian obtains the cup of Christ, and drinks out of it, then comes the anger of God in the fleshly evil nature, as also the devil and the evil world, and set upon him on every side, because he has this cup in his habitation, and prophesies or divines against them, that they have the cup of whoredom and abomination in them, and because he reveals it, and will not quaff with them in their cup of hypocrisy and blasphemy. 1 Upon, into or concerning. 2 Or, knave.
27. And then must a Christian lay down his sack of God's grace at their feet, and suffer himself to be bound and captivated in their scorning and contemning; and then they oftentimes bereave him of body and life, honour and welfare, and set him with his cup before their judgement. And there a Christian must drink out of their cup the derision, cross, suffering and death of Christ, and imitate and follow Christ in this cup, and so not go home again in peace, with his filled sack of the grace of Christ, through this world into his eternal country of his Father.l He must be conformable to Christ's image (Phil. iii. 10; Rom. viii. 29), and follow him in his way which he has walked in this world. This is powerfully prefigured in this figure. 8. For Joseph's brethren stood now in the figure of a converted Christian, whom God has clothed with Christ, and also laid in the cup of the cross, together with grace, and, moreover, uppermost in the sack; to signify that when the grace of Christ, which is bestowed on a Christian, shall work and bring forth fruit, that it is not done in standing still in peace and quietness, but in the strife about this cup, for it lies uppermost in the sack of grace, and the strife about the cup must always be the forerunner of it.
39. For Christ says, The Son of Man is not come to establish peace on the earth, but strife and persecution, that one be against another and persecute him (Matt. x. 34; Luke xii. 51). Also, He has kindled a fire, and desires it should burn (Luke xii. 49). And this is it: that a true Christian must always be spoken against, even those of his own family in flesh and blood must be his enemies (Micah vii. 6), that the sown and planted tree of pearl may stir and bring forth fruit. 10. As an earthly tree must stand in heat, cold and wind, and have great strokes and opposition, whereby the sap is drawn out of the earth into the tree, so that it blossoms and bears fruit: thus also the poor soul, in such smitings and opposition, in scorn and misery, must draw power and virtue into itself out of the bestowed and entrusted grace, viz. out of [the soil] and field of the Word of God, with earnest prayer and working, and thereby bear the fruit of faith, viz. good doctrine, instruction and conversation. 11. For thereby the soul feeds the spirit of Christ, and Christ feeds the soul again out of the sack of the substantial grace, viz. with his flesh of the substantial wisdom of God; and thus they give themselves one to another, to a perpetual working. 1 Or, native country.
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.
1their cup; and then reproach they him for a wicked person, who has stolen their cup and authority from them, and run after him and would murder him, and damn him to temporal and eternal death, and reproach him without ceasing for a treacherous person, who has stolen their cup. 6. That is, when a true Christian obtains the cup of Christ, and drinks out of it, then comes the anger of God in the fleshly evil nature, as also the devil and the evil world, and set upon him on every side, because he has this cup in his habitation, and prophesies or divines against them, that they have the cup of whoredom and abomination in them, and because he reveals it, and will not quaff with them in their cup of hypocrisy and blasphemy. 1 Upon, into or concerning. 2 Or, knave.
27. And then must a Christian lay down his sack of God's grace at their feet, and suffer himself to be bound and captivated in their scorning and contemning; and then they oftentimes bereave him of body and life, honour and welfare, and set him with his cup before their judgement. And there a Christian must drink out of their cup the derision, cross, suffering and death of Christ, and imitate and follow Christ in this cup, and so not go home again in peace, with his filled sack of the grace of Christ, through this world into his eternal country of his Father.l He must be conformable to Christ's image (Phil. iii. 10; Rom. viii. 29), and follow him in his way which he has walked in this world. This is powerfully prefigured in this figure. 8. For Joseph's brethren stood now in the figure of a converted Christian, whom God has clothed with Christ, and also laid in the cup of the cross, together with grace, and, moreover, uppermost in the sack; to signify that when the grace of Christ, which is bestowed on a Christian, shall work and bring forth fruit, that it is not done in standing still in peace and quietness, but in the strife about this cup, for it lies uppermost in the sack of grace, and the strife about the cup must always be the forerunner of it.
39. For Christ says, The Son of Man is not come to establish peace on the earth, but strife and persecution, that one be against another and persecute him (Matt. x. 34; Luke xii. 51). Also, He has kindled a fire, and desires it should burn (Luke xii. 49). And this is it: that a true Christian must always be spoken against, even those of his own family in flesh and blood must be his enemies (Micah vii. 6), that the sown and planted tree of pearl may stir and bring forth fruit. 10. As an earthly tree must stand in heat, cold and wind, and have great strokes and opposition, whereby the sap is drawn out of the earth into the tree, so that it blossoms and bears fruit: thus also the poor soul, in such smitings and opposition, in scorn and misery, must draw power and virtue into itself out of the bestowed and entrusted grace, viz. out of [the soil] and field of the Word of God, with earnest prayer and working, and thereby bear the fruit of faith, viz. good doctrine, instruction and conversation. 11. For thereby the soul feeds the spirit of Christ, and Christ feeds the soul again out of the sack of the substantial grace, viz. with his flesh of the substantial wisdom of God; and thus they give themselves one to another, to a perpetual working. 1 Or, native country.
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.
No commentary for this page.