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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.
1sack. The other forms 1 of life of nature are free, and cannot hold the cup for Christ. 1 Conditions or qualities. 56. For they are not the right sack to put it in, but the ground of the heavenly world's substance is the sack to which the holy cup of Christ does belong, which pours the ground of nature out of it. Therefore must Joseph's brother be made guilty of the cup, because he stood in the figure of the inward man wherein Christ would manifest himself with his cup of the cross: and so the other brethren, viz. the poor soul together with the body, be quit and released from the guilt. 57. Therefore says Joseph's steward, He is my servant who has the cup, he shall serve me, but you shall be quit. That is, Christ is, in this inward Benjamin, Joseph's brother, and serves God with overcoming of death and the anger of God in man. And so all the other brethren, viz. the natural life, shall be quit from guilt and pain: and it stands excellently in the figure. 58. Moses says further, And they hastened, and laid everyone his sack off on to the earth; and everyone took his sack off and searched, and began at the eldest, and so to the youngest: and there they found the cup in Benjamin's sack. And then they rent their clothes, and loaded everyone his ass, and went again into the city (Gen. xliv. 11-13).
259. When Adam was fallen into sin, then the law and command fetched him back again, and charged him with the sin and theft, that he had eaten of the wrong fruit with a wicked mouth: therefore must he return again into the city, viz. into the earth, out of which the body was proceeded, and there lay down his sack into the earth. And there God's righteousness searches into all the natural properties, viz. truth and righteousness, which avails before God, viz. the image of heaven; and began from the first form of nature, and so on to the youngest and last, viz. to the incorporated ground of grace after the fall, and cannot find his cup of salvation in any natural property, although the body goes quite to powder in the searching, all but the youngest brother in the inspoken or inspired word of grace; in that lies the cup of Joseph and of Christ: this the Spirit prefigures powerfully in this figure.
360. Moses says further, And Judah went with his brethren into Joseph's house; for he was there still; and they fell down before him on the earth. But Joseph said to them, How have you dared to do this thing? know you not that such a man as I am can find it out? Judah spoke and said, What shall we say unto my lord? How shall we speak? and wherein can we justify ourselves? God has found out the misdeed of your servants: behold here, we, and he with whom the cup is found, are the servants of my lord. But he said, That be far from me to do such a thing: the man with whom the cup is found, he shall be my servant, but go you up in peace to your father (Gen. xliv. 14-17). The inward figure stands thus: 61. When God blamed and charged man with guilt by reason of sin, and presented this to him in his anger by the deluge or flood, also by Sodom and Gomorrah before their eyes, that they had robbed in the house of Joseph, that is, in the Covenant of grace, and transgressed the Covenant, then went Judah with his brethren, that is, Moses,
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.
1sack. The other forms 1 of life of nature are free, and cannot hold the cup for Christ. 1 Conditions or qualities. 56. For they are not the right sack to put it in, but the ground of the heavenly world's substance is the sack to which the holy cup of Christ does belong, which pours the ground of nature out of it. Therefore must Joseph's brother be made guilty of the cup, because he stood in the figure of the inward man wherein Christ would manifest himself with his cup of the cross: and so the other brethren, viz. the poor soul together with the body, be quit and released from the guilt. 57. Therefore says Joseph's steward, He is my servant who has the cup, he shall serve me, but you shall be quit. That is, Christ is, in this inward Benjamin, Joseph's brother, and serves God with overcoming of death and the anger of God in man. And so all the other brethren, viz. the natural life, shall be quit from guilt and pain: and it stands excellently in the figure. 58. Moses says further, And they hastened, and laid everyone his sack off on to the earth; and everyone took his sack off and searched, and began at the eldest, and so to the youngest: and there they found the cup in Benjamin's sack. And then they rent their clothes, and loaded everyone his ass, and went again into the city (Gen. xliv. 11-13).
259. When Adam was fallen into sin, then the law and command fetched him back again, and charged him with the sin and theft, that he had eaten of the wrong fruit with a wicked mouth: therefore must he return again into the city, viz. into the earth, out of which the body was proceeded, and there lay down his sack into the earth. And there God's righteousness searches into all the natural properties, viz. truth and righteousness, which avails before God, viz. the image of heaven; and began from the first form of nature, and so on to the youngest and last, viz. to the incorporated ground of grace after the fall, and cannot find his cup of salvation in any natural property, although the body goes quite to powder in the searching, all but the youngest brother in the inspoken or inspired word of grace; in that lies the cup of Joseph and of Christ: this the Spirit prefigures powerfully in this figure.
360. Moses says further, And Judah went with his brethren into Joseph's house; for he was there still; and they fell down before him on the earth. But Joseph said to them, How have you dared to do this thing? know you not that such a man as I am can find it out? Judah spoke and said, What shall we say unto my lord? How shall we speak? and wherein can we justify ourselves? God has found out the misdeed of your servants: behold here, we, and he with whom the cup is found, are the servants of my lord. But he said, That be far from me to do such a thing: the man with whom the cup is found, he shall be my servant, but go you up in peace to your father (Gen. xliv. 14-17). The inward figure stands thus: 61. When God blamed and charged man with guilt by reason of sin, and presented this to him in his anger by the deluge or flood, also by Sodom and Gomorrah before their eyes, that they had robbed in the house of Joseph, that is, in the Covenant of grace, and transgressed the Covenant, then went Judah with his brethren, that is, Moses,
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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