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.
19. This is the true, real ground of our Christian faith; that as Abraham put on Christ in the faith, so we also at present do receive, and, in our heavenly part of the humanity, put on Christ in his humanity, according to the heavenly world's essence; in the same flesh and blood which Melchizedek represented and brought to Abraham in the heavenly bread and wine, viz. in the type thereof; yea, wholly receive it into our ens of the heavenly world's essence, which died in Adam, and [we] become alive therein, and arise from death in Christ, and dwell very essentially with our spiritual man, in him. And even then he is our own righteousness, we in him, and he in us, only one Christ, one God, one faith, one tree in the Paradise of God, in the stem which is God, and in the power and virtue thereof; which is Christ, and in the branches of the tree, which are we Christians, wholly one tree, not two: We understand not herein the gross bestial man, full of the Serpent's ens, which shall not inherit the kingdom of God (John vi.), but the true man, which God created in his image.
210. Let Master Sophister or wiseling of Babel look us right in the face, and see what spirit's child we are. We understand not the beast, but the man Christ, which died in Adam, which was again regenerated out of Abraham's seed, and deprived death of its might, and destroyed hell in man, and slew the death in us, and arose again from death, and lives for ever. The same we mean by a right Christian, and not calves and oxen, dogs, adders, serpents, toads, and the like, who would with their beasts of vanity be outwardly adopted, and regenerate children of God. No such beasts comes into heaven; only and alone [and none else but a Christ, viz,] a child of Christ, which is born of Christ's flesh and blood: without are dogs (Rev. xxii. 15). 11. Therefore let it be told you, O Babel, you ride upon the dragon of your own contrived half devilish, and half bestial tongue in your own words and will, and hast not Abraham's faith, viz. in the received and formed Word, which became man; but you howl with the dogs; and will, with your [snarling, jeering, contentious] dog's will, in a strange child, be Abraham's heir. 12. But God said to Abraham, Your servant's child shall not be your heir, but he that is begotten out of your loins, who is born of the faith of righteousness, he shall be God's heir, and not the son of the bondwoman, viz. the strange introduced gross bestial Serpent's ens.
313. And God said to Abraham, / am the Lord that has brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give you this land to inherit it. But Abraham said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall possess the same? And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon. And he took all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds he divided not. And when the fowls fell upon the carcases, Abraham drove them away. And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham; and lot an horror of great darkness fell upon him. And he said to Abraham, By this you shall surely know, that your seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and they shall he compelled to serve, and be afflicted four hundred years, but I will judge the nation whom they must serve; and afterwards I will bring them out with great substance. And you shall go to your fathers in peace, and be buried in a good old age. But they shall come hither again after four generations: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. Now when the sun was gone down, and it was dark, lo! a smoking furnace, and a fire-flame passed between the pieces (Gen. xv. 7-17).
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.
19. This is the true, real ground of our Christian faith; that as Abraham put on Christ in the faith, so we also at present do receive, and, in our heavenly part of the humanity, put on Christ in his humanity, according to the heavenly world's essence; in the same flesh and blood which Melchizedek represented and brought to Abraham in the heavenly bread and wine, viz. in the type thereof; yea, wholly receive it into our ens of the heavenly world's essence, which died in Adam, and [we] become alive therein, and arise from death in Christ, and dwell very essentially with our spiritual man, in him. And even then he is our own righteousness, we in him, and he in us, only one Christ, one God, one faith, one tree in the Paradise of God, in the stem which is God, and in the power and virtue thereof; which is Christ, and in the branches of the tree, which are we Christians, wholly one tree, not two: We understand not herein the gross bestial man, full of the Serpent's ens, which shall not inherit the kingdom of God (John vi.), but the true man, which God created in his image.
210. Let Master Sophister or wiseling of Babel look us right in the face, and see what spirit's child we are. We understand not the beast, but the man Christ, which died in Adam, which was again regenerated out of Abraham's seed, and deprived death of its might, and destroyed hell in man, and slew the death in us, and arose again from death, and lives for ever. The same we mean by a right Christian, and not calves and oxen, dogs, adders, serpents, toads, and the like, who would with their beasts of vanity be outwardly adopted, and regenerate children of God. No such beasts comes into heaven; only and alone [and none else but a Christ, viz,] a child of Christ, which is born of Christ's flesh and blood: without are dogs (Rev. xxii. 15). 11. Therefore let it be told you, O Babel, you ride upon the dragon of your own contrived half devilish, and half bestial tongue in your own words and will, and hast not Abraham's faith, viz. in the received and formed Word, which became man; but you howl with the dogs; and will, with your [snarling, jeering, contentious] dog's will, in a strange child, be Abraham's heir. 12. But God said to Abraham, Your servant's child shall not be your heir, but he that is begotten out of your loins, who is born of the faith of righteousness, he shall be God's heir, and not the son of the bondwoman, viz. the strange introduced gross bestial Serpent's ens.
313. And God said to Abraham, / am the Lord that has brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give you this land to inherit it. But Abraham said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall possess the same? And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon. And he took all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds he divided not. And when the fowls fell upon the carcases, Abraham drove them away. And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham; and lot an horror of great darkness fell upon him. And he said to Abraham, By this you shall surely know, that your seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and they shall he compelled to serve, and be afflicted four hundred years, but I will judge the nation whom they must serve; and afterwards I will bring them out with great substance. And you shall go to your fathers in peace, and be buried in a good old age. But they shall come hither again after four generations: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. Now when the sun was gone down, and it was dark, lo! a smoking furnace, and a fire-flame passed between the pieces (Gen. xv. 7-17).
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.