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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.
12. And he lived under the king Abimelech, and sojourned as a stranger at Gerar. In these two names, viz. Abimelech, and Gerar, the figure stands plain in the generation or formation of the Word, without any interpretation or exposition; wherefore the spirit in Moses wrote down this history; and from whence he looks as through an exact perspective. For Abimelech denotes the man of ingenious and discreet reason, viz. the true man, but without Christ, only in the creature, as he is created. Gerar betokenes the strong austere life of nature, wherein the understanding must dwell, which nature is corrupted, and from that corruption casts or darts temptations and oppositions continually into the life's understanding, or reason-light; so that the life stands in a constant contrariety, and is incessantly sifted, winnowed and proved, which is the cross of the children of God; that they see, that while they live in themselves in self-reason, they can do nothing else but go astray, slip and err. As may be seen here in Abraham, when God led him away from the borders of the Sodomites he went towards the south, unto king Abimelech. The inward figure of this stands thus: 3. When God had manifested himself to Abraham, and set forth
2the figure of Christ and his kingdom, and also the power of judgement upon the whole earth, then God hid himself again from Abraham; and then Abraham went towards the south country; that is, into his reason, viz. into man's own understanding; and dwelt at Gerar, that is, in the corrupt nature; which manifests itself plainly, in his carriage towards Abimelech, where he, in the fear of nature, in the temptation, did deny his wife, and said that she was not his wife; that so he might but preserve himself by the subtlety of reason. And we see here also, how that that very thing, by which he thought in reason to keep himself from mischief; must reprove and teach him; as we see how Abimelech reproved him in that he had denied his wife, with whom he had almost sinned, if the Lord had not warned him; and the exposition is this: 4. If we see a man whom the Spirit of God drives, and by whom he oftentimes speaks, we must not so take it up, and think that he is something more than other men: as Abraham was no more than others in his own reason. The self-reason in them is as wavering, dubious and imperfect as in other men, and that what they know and teach of God, is not their own propriety. As we see here in Abraham, how he out of fear did not spare his Sarah [but denied her out of a timorous conjecture]; though Abimelech had taken her away from him to be his concubine, that so he [Abraham] might but live, and it might be well with him for her sake.
35. Thus God proves his children, that they might see that they, in their own ability, are no more than all other sinful men; and that men should not so set by them and hold them for a god. Thus oftentimes God permits them to go astray and err, and yet then he rebukes them also by those whom they ought to teach, as we see here in Abimelech; how he must reprove Abraham, and make him ashamed, that he would not spare his wife for a small fear's sake, but would deny her. 6. And although it does fall out, that sometimes we see such a man whom God drives to err, yet we ought not therefore presently wholly to reject him and set him at nought, and think that he is wholly without God, as the world does; but think that God does thus set his children under the cross to prove them; that they should
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.
12. And he lived under the king Abimelech, and sojourned as a stranger at Gerar. In these two names, viz. Abimelech, and Gerar, the figure stands plain in the generation or formation of the Word, without any interpretation or exposition; wherefore the spirit in Moses wrote down this history; and from whence he looks as through an exact perspective. For Abimelech denotes the man of ingenious and discreet reason, viz. the true man, but without Christ, only in the creature, as he is created. Gerar betokenes the strong austere life of nature, wherein the understanding must dwell, which nature is corrupted, and from that corruption casts or darts temptations and oppositions continually into the life's understanding, or reason-light; so that the life stands in a constant contrariety, and is incessantly sifted, winnowed and proved, which is the cross of the children of God; that they see, that while they live in themselves in self-reason, they can do nothing else but go astray, slip and err. As may be seen here in Abraham, when God led him away from the borders of the Sodomites he went towards the south, unto king Abimelech. The inward figure of this stands thus: 3. When God had manifested himself to Abraham, and set forth
2the figure of Christ and his kingdom, and also the power of judgement upon the whole earth, then God hid himself again from Abraham; and then Abraham went towards the south country; that is, into his reason, viz. into man's own understanding; and dwelt at Gerar, that is, in the corrupt nature; which manifests itself plainly, in his carriage towards Abimelech, where he, in the fear of nature, in the temptation, did deny his wife, and said that she was not his wife; that so he might but preserve himself by the subtlety of reason. And we see here also, how that that very thing, by which he thought in reason to keep himself from mischief; must reprove and teach him; as we see how Abimelech reproved him in that he had denied his wife, with whom he had almost sinned, if the Lord had not warned him; and the exposition is this: 4. If we see a man whom the Spirit of God drives, and by whom he oftentimes speaks, we must not so take it up, and think that he is something more than other men: as Abraham was no more than others in his own reason. The self-reason in them is as wavering, dubious and imperfect as in other men, and that what they know and teach of God, is not their own propriety. As we see here in Abraham, how he out of fear did not spare his Sarah [but denied her out of a timorous conjecture]; though Abimelech had taken her away from him to be his concubine, that so he [Abraham] might but live, and it might be well with him for her sake.
35. Thus God proves his children, that they might see that they, in their own ability, are no more than all other sinful men; and that men should not so set by them and hold them for a god. Thus oftentimes God permits them to go astray and err, and yet then he rebukes them also by those whom they ought to teach, as we see here in Abimelech; how he must reprove Abraham, and make him ashamed, that he would not spare his wife for a small fear's sake, but would deny her. 6. And although it does fall out, that sometimes we see such a man whom God drives to err, yet we ought not therefore presently wholly to reject him and set him at nought, and think that he is wholly without God, as the world does; but think that God does thus set his children under the cross to prove them; that they should
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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