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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.
147. For the Jews know that God has spoken with their fathers, and given them the circumcision, and the Covenant: there they stick. But could the Christians fundamentally demonstrate to them what the Covenant and circumcision is, essentially and effectually, together with their offerings, 1 they would forsake the sign, and enter into the substance. 1 Sacrifices. 48. But that it has so fallen out, that both the Jews, and also the Christians, have walked in blindness, even till this last time, and so also the Turks, who, by reason of the blindness, contention, and ungodliness of the Christians, have turned themselves unto reason and nature. God has therefore permitted it, because the Christians and Jews, both in the Old and New Testament, received and appropriated to themselves the Covenant, and the seal of the Covenant in the outward shell only, viz. in the vessel [or literal notion and apprehension], and lived only to the outward earthly mortal man. They always minded and provided for the earthly kingdom and life, more than for the eternal. 49. They would understand in the husk, viz. in the outward letter, what God has spoken; and chose to themselves reason-wise people, which were gifted in the outward, formal, logical and notional understanding of the letter, who had not the spirit and power of God's Word and life in the new birth in them; but only the spirit of self-pride, and the earthly belly-god, contriving thereby how they
2might be rich, in Christ's poverty, upon the earth. These men have blinded them, so that both among the Jews and Christians men have minded and loved only the earthly ens' life. 50. Therefore God has permitted that the wonders of nature in the power of his anger should be opened [and brought forth in them], and that they should thus stick in blindness, yet in controversy and contests (so that the name and memory of his Covenant might not quite be extinguished), and one nation has by reason thereof exercised and evilly entreated another in the contention and contrariety; whereby of tentimes a fair green twig has sprung from the [right] understanding, which has been strange unto them, by reason of their received opinion, and they have contemned and persecuted it; for the earthly man in self is not worthy of the holy Covenant and seal. 51. And seeing God knew very well that they would run of themselves without being sent of him, and would abuse the holy ens in the Covenant; thereupon the veil of Moses has beset the Jews, and the Tower of Babel, with the Antichrist (viz. the outward Christ instead of the holy ens in the Covenant, that is, God's presence), the Christians; so that they have been evermore seeking, in this Antichrist, what God is, in his Covenant, will, and essence.
352. Thus they have been exercised in contention and persecution, in that they have persecuted one another, yet so, as that God's children have sprung forth in the cross, and Christ has been inwardly manifest to them; but outwardly Babel has yet stood both among the Jews, Christians and Turks. The Antichrist is only the same among all, for he is the titular or letter god, wherein the self-will seeks and worships God in the husk. 53. Hear, therefore, ye Christians, Jews, Turks and Heathen, even all nations of the earth, what now (yet once more for a farewell in this world's being) is freely tendered unto you, in the visitation of the merciful God in the voice of his trumpet, by his love-will and spirit. The sound of the trumpet concerns you all; let it enter into your ears, and do but open your ears and hearts a little from self and then you shall hear the sound in you: it sounds through all, even to the ends of the earth, but no self-will hears it.
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.
147. For the Jews know that God has spoken with their fathers, and given them the circumcision, and the Covenant: there they stick. But could the Christians fundamentally demonstrate to them what the Covenant and circumcision is, essentially and effectually, together with their offerings, 1 they would forsake the sign, and enter into the substance. 1 Sacrifices. 48. But that it has so fallen out, that both the Jews, and also the Christians, have walked in blindness, even till this last time, and so also the Turks, who, by reason of the blindness, contention, and ungodliness of the Christians, have turned themselves unto reason and nature. God has therefore permitted it, because the Christians and Jews, both in the Old and New Testament, received and appropriated to themselves the Covenant, and the seal of the Covenant in the outward shell only, viz. in the vessel [or literal notion and apprehension], and lived only to the outward earthly mortal man. They always minded and provided for the earthly kingdom and life, more than for the eternal. 49. They would understand in the husk, viz. in the outward letter, what God has spoken; and chose to themselves reason-wise people, which were gifted in the outward, formal, logical and notional understanding of the letter, who had not the spirit and power of God's Word and life in the new birth in them; but only the spirit of self-pride, and the earthly belly-god, contriving thereby how they
2might be rich, in Christ's poverty, upon the earth. These men have blinded them, so that both among the Jews and Christians men have minded and loved only the earthly ens' life. 50. Therefore God has permitted that the wonders of nature in the power of his anger should be opened [and brought forth in them], and that they should thus stick in blindness, yet in controversy and contests (so that the name and memory of his Covenant might not quite be extinguished), and one nation has by reason thereof exercised and evilly entreated another in the contention and contrariety; whereby of tentimes a fair green twig has sprung from the [right] understanding, which has been strange unto them, by reason of their received opinion, and they have contemned and persecuted it; for the earthly man in self is not worthy of the holy Covenant and seal. 51. And seeing God knew very well that they would run of themselves without being sent of him, and would abuse the holy ens in the Covenant; thereupon the veil of Moses has beset the Jews, and the Tower of Babel, with the Antichrist (viz. the outward Christ instead of the holy ens in the Covenant, that is, God's presence), the Christians; so that they have been evermore seeking, in this Antichrist, what God is, in his Covenant, will, and essence.
352. Thus they have been exercised in contention and persecution, in that they have persecuted one another, yet so, as that God's children have sprung forth in the cross, and Christ has been inwardly manifest to them; but outwardly Babel has yet stood both among the Jews, Christians and Turks. The Antichrist is only the same among all, for he is the titular or letter god, wherein the self-will seeks and worships God in the husk. 53. Hear, therefore, ye Christians, Jews, Turks and Heathen, even all nations of the earth, what now (yet once more for a farewell in this world's being) is freely tendered unto you, in the visitation of the merciful God in the voice of his trumpet, by his love-will and spirit. The sound of the trumpet concerns you all; let it enter into your ears, and do but open your ears and hearts a little from self and then you shall hear the sound in you: it sounds through all, even to the ends of the earth, but no self-will hears it.
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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