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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.
161. And when man brings it so far, that all is one unto him [that he is able to esteem all things alike, and be content with any condition, as St Paul teaches], then he is [as] the poor Christ, who had not whereon to lay his head (Matt. viii. 20); and rightly follows Christ, who said, He that forsakes not house, court, monies, goods, brethren, sisters, wife and child, and denies himself he is not worthy of me (Matt. x. 37; xix. 29). 62. And for this self and unworthiness' sake God has turned away his holy countenance from the nations, so that they have known him only through a dark word and shadow. 63. But he that enters into this total resignation, he comes, in Christ, to divine contemplation, so that he sees God in him, and speaks with God, and God with him, and understands what God's word, being and will is. This man is fit to teach, and none else; he teaches God's word from him; for God is made known and manifest to him in his Covenant, of which he is a servant and minister; for he wills nothing save what God wills through him.
264. He teaches, when God commands him; let it be either to friends or foes, in their season, or out of their season; he thinks that God must do in him as he please, and albeit that he must therefore suffer scorn, yet 't is all one unto him; if he be honoured and respected of men, he humbles himself before God and his brethren, and gives God and his brethren the honour, and takes it not at all unto himself; but if they curse him, and smite him on the face, he thinks thus: Now I stand in Christ's estate of persecution, it shall turn unto the best for me, and for my brethren. 65. Lo! loving brethren, this is a Christian. And such a kingdom God now offers to you, by the wonderful sound of his spirit's trumpet. And there must and shall be such a kingdom soon manifest and come into being, for a witness unto all the nations of the earth, of which all the prophets have prophesied. 66. On the contrary, he offers to all wicked, unwilling, stubborn men, his anger, wrath and hardening, to devour them, and to make an end with Babel. This say not I, but the spirit of the wonders of all nations. 67. Therefore truss up yourself in armour and lay lustily about you, you Antichristian Babylon, and devour much blood, for you yourself
3are even he that destroys, and quite ruins yourself: for you, there is no remedy [you will take no counsel, your own Cain-like fury in hypocrisy does harden you], also there is no repentance in your will. But for the children of God under you we have written this, as we have known and seen it. 68. Now says Babel, Whence shall this people come that shall know the Lord, and live in God? Hear, O Babel among your brethren in the time of your affliction and tribulation, they are brought forth in their disrespect and misery; and you call them fools, and know them not. Let no man wait for another's coming; the time is already come about; the voice of the caller and hearer is already present, the covering is put away from this voice. You are not at this time called under a veil, but with open mouth, very clearly. 69. This voice of the Crier opens God's clear countenance in his children, and in the ungodly the angry countenance, seeing they desire fully to purse up all in covetousness into self, viz. into the Antichristian bag, and to bring the whore of self even to the very top of the Babylonical tower.
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.
161. And when man brings it so far, that all is one unto him [that he is able to esteem all things alike, and be content with any condition, as St Paul teaches], then he is [as] the poor Christ, who had not whereon to lay his head (Matt. viii. 20); and rightly follows Christ, who said, He that forsakes not house, court, monies, goods, brethren, sisters, wife and child, and denies himself he is not worthy of me (Matt. x. 37; xix. 29). 62. And for this self and unworthiness' sake God has turned away his holy countenance from the nations, so that they have known him only through a dark word and shadow. 63. But he that enters into this total resignation, he comes, in Christ, to divine contemplation, so that he sees God in him, and speaks with God, and God with him, and understands what God's word, being and will is. This man is fit to teach, and none else; he teaches God's word from him; for God is made known and manifest to him in his Covenant, of which he is a servant and minister; for he wills nothing save what God wills through him.
264. He teaches, when God commands him; let it be either to friends or foes, in their season, or out of their season; he thinks that God must do in him as he please, and albeit that he must therefore suffer scorn, yet 't is all one unto him; if he be honoured and respected of men, he humbles himself before God and his brethren, and gives God and his brethren the honour, and takes it not at all unto himself; but if they curse him, and smite him on the face, he thinks thus: Now I stand in Christ's estate of persecution, it shall turn unto the best for me, and for my brethren. 65. Lo! loving brethren, this is a Christian. And such a kingdom God now offers to you, by the wonderful sound of his spirit's trumpet. And there must and shall be such a kingdom soon manifest and come into being, for a witness unto all the nations of the earth, of which all the prophets have prophesied. 66. On the contrary, he offers to all wicked, unwilling, stubborn men, his anger, wrath and hardening, to devour them, and to make an end with Babel. This say not I, but the spirit of the wonders of all nations. 67. Therefore truss up yourself in armour and lay lustily about you, you Antichristian Babylon, and devour much blood, for you yourself
3are even he that destroys, and quite ruins yourself: for you, there is no remedy [you will take no counsel, your own Cain-like fury in hypocrisy does harden you], also there is no repentance in your will. But for the children of God under you we have written this, as we have known and seen it. 68. Now says Babel, Whence shall this people come that shall know the Lord, and live in God? Hear, O Babel among your brethren in the time of your affliction and tribulation, they are brought forth in their disrespect and misery; and you call them fools, and know them not. Let no man wait for another's coming; the time is already come about; the voice of the caller and hearer is already present, the covering is put away from this voice. You are not at this time called under a veil, but with open mouth, very clearly. 69. This voice of the Crier opens God's clear countenance in his children, and in the ungodly the angry countenance, seeing they desire fully to purse up all in covetousness into self, viz. into the Antichristian bag, and to bring the whore of self even to the very top of the Babylonical tower.
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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