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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.
146. Therefore we ought narrowly to observe what it means, when the spirit in Moses draws a veil before his face, that it does not appear wholly pure before God: and yet for the unavoidableness' sake it must be so. 47. And in the deeds of God we ought not to judge according to reason; for reason looks only upon the outward, and understands nothing of the inward. It knows nothing of the root of this tree; and of its boughs and branches, from whence each branch or people must take its unavoidable rise and original. The Forty-Fifth Chapter How God led Abraham very wonderfully, and how he always stood by him in Temptation, and defended him: What we are to understand hereby 1. ABRAHAM must be only as a pilgrim upon the earth, and travel from one place unto another, and dwell in tents ;[ Gen. xx] and was everywhere tried, and tempted. His wife Sarah was twice taken from him; but wonderfully protected and preserved of God; as once by Pharaoh, in Egypt, and then by Abimelech, King of Gerar; but both times protected by God. 2. And now that Abraham, viz. the stock and beginning of the conceived ens of faith, in which Christ was understood, must thus
2wander from one place to another, and could have no abiding place upon the earth, and moreover must stand in fear and temptation: the same is the true type of Christendom upon the earth; how the same should not be bound unto any certain place; not unto any people that God did choose thereto in a peculiar manner; but that Christ was given, with his Gospel of the kingdom of God, to all nations. 3. And how he would wander with his knowledge from one people to another; and have no where any constant abiding place with a people, but be among the nations with his children upon the earth, only as a sojourner or stranger; and how they would continually try to destroy Christendom [The true Christians] among the nations, and cast reproach upon it, as they would sinfully reproach Sarah, Abraham's wife. 4. And how the Christians should be continually tempted and exercised of the nations, and plagued with contention and war. Also, how Christ would go with his Gospel from one people to another, when they should be weary and glutted with the same, and hold it only for a custom and a common ordinary thing; and so they would grow wholly blind in it, and make only a fine devout lip-labour thereof and suppose to find out Christ by their acute disputations [A work of prating and fair spoken discourse] and arguments.
35. And then he would depart with the understanding and spirit from them, and come unto another people, which also would be only fleshly, and account and look upon Christ externally, as a mere man; as Pharaoh and this king Abimelech looked upon Abraham, and his wife; and desired to have carnal knowledge of Sarah, by reason of her beauty; which did signify and denote, that they would put on Christ in the flesh in an outward bestial manner, but not in power and spirit. 6. As it is here to be seen in Abimelech, and also in Pharaoh, that when they desired to know Sarah carnally, that the Lord came in among them with punishments, and plagues, and showed them his angry-countenance, shut them up, and dismayed them, as if he bound them with the chains of his might; and made their women barren, and terrified them with visions and presages; as he did to this Abimelech, and threatened him with death in the dream; and made known unto him that Abraham was a man of God; and how he was blessed of God. 7. Through which means God brought the nations to the faith; [for] when he came unto a fleshly unbelieving people, then he showed himself in power and wonders; which the carnal nations seeing, did convert themselves, and turn unto God. 8. Thus Abraham must be a type of Christ's kingdom upon the earth; and go up and down from one people to another, whereupon
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.
146. Therefore we ought narrowly to observe what it means, when the spirit in Moses draws a veil before his face, that it does not appear wholly pure before God: and yet for the unavoidableness' sake it must be so. 47. And in the deeds of God we ought not to judge according to reason; for reason looks only upon the outward, and understands nothing of the inward. It knows nothing of the root of this tree; and of its boughs and branches, from whence each branch or people must take its unavoidable rise and original. The Forty-Fifth Chapter How God led Abraham very wonderfully, and how he always stood by him in Temptation, and defended him: What we are to understand hereby 1. ABRAHAM must be only as a pilgrim upon the earth, and travel from one place unto another, and dwell in tents ;[ Gen. xx] and was everywhere tried, and tempted. His wife Sarah was twice taken from him; but wonderfully protected and preserved of God; as once by Pharaoh, in Egypt, and then by Abimelech, King of Gerar; but both times protected by God. 2. And now that Abraham, viz. the stock and beginning of the conceived ens of faith, in which Christ was understood, must thus
2wander from one place to another, and could have no abiding place upon the earth, and moreover must stand in fear and temptation: the same is the true type of Christendom upon the earth; how the same should not be bound unto any certain place; not unto any people that God did choose thereto in a peculiar manner; but that Christ was given, with his Gospel of the kingdom of God, to all nations. 3. And how he would wander with his knowledge from one people to another; and have no where any constant abiding place with a people, but be among the nations with his children upon the earth, only as a sojourner or stranger; and how they would continually try to destroy Christendom [The true Christians] among the nations, and cast reproach upon it, as they would sinfully reproach Sarah, Abraham's wife. 4. And how the Christians should be continually tempted and exercised of the nations, and plagued with contention and war. Also, how Christ would go with his Gospel from one people to another, when they should be weary and glutted with the same, and hold it only for a custom and a common ordinary thing; and so they would grow wholly blind in it, and make only a fine devout lip-labour thereof and suppose to find out Christ by their acute disputations [A work of prating and fair spoken discourse] and arguments.
35. And then he would depart with the understanding and spirit from them, and come unto another people, which also would be only fleshly, and account and look upon Christ externally, as a mere man; as Pharaoh and this king Abimelech looked upon Abraham, and his wife; and desired to have carnal knowledge of Sarah, by reason of her beauty; which did signify and denote, that they would put on Christ in the flesh in an outward bestial manner, but not in power and spirit. 6. As it is here to be seen in Abimelech, and also in Pharaoh, that when they desired to know Sarah carnally, that the Lord came in among them with punishments, and plagues, and showed them his angry-countenance, shut them up, and dismayed them, as if he bound them with the chains of his might; and made their women barren, and terrified them with visions and presages; as he did to this Abimelech, and threatened him with death in the dream; and made known unto him that Abraham was a man of God; and how he was blessed of God. 7. Through which means God brought the nations to the faith; [for] when he came unto a fleshly unbelieving people, then he showed himself in power and wonders; which the carnal nations seeing, did convert themselves, and turn unto God. 8. Thus Abraham must be a type of Christ's kingdom upon the earth; and go up and down from one people to another, whereupon
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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