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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.
125. God receiveth no Sinner into His Poiver and Virtue , unless the Shiner go forth from his Sins , and enter with the Desire into God. And then, 1 He will not cast out those that so 'come unto him/ He hath given to the Will an open Qate in Christ , saying, ‘ Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden with ‘ Sins/ and ‘ I will refresh you ; take my Yoke upon you/ that is, the Cross of the Enmity in the Flesh . This was the Yoke of Christ , which he had to bear for the Sins of all Men. This Cross or Yoke the resigned Will must also take upon- itself in the evil earthly sinful Flesh , and bear it after Christ in Patience and Hope of Deliverance. It must also continually break the Head of the Serpent , in and through Christ's Will and Spirit \ and kill . and destroy the earthly Will in God’s Anger \ not letting it rest Of True Resignation . 55 on a soft Bed when Sin is committed, and thinking to repait one Time or other. 26. No, no, the earthly Will groweth strong, fat, and zvanton upon this soft Bed. .But as soon as the Light of God shineth in thee, and showeth Sin to thee, the Will of thy Soul must sink itself down into the Passion and Death of Christ , and wrap itself up close therein. It must take the Passion of Christ into its Possession, and be a Lord over the Death of Sin by the Death of Christ , and kill and destroy it in the Death of Christ.
227. The Will of S in must die, though it be never so unwilling. Be at Enmity therefore with the voluptuous earthly Flesh ; give it not what it would have ;• let it fast and suffer Hunger. until its ticklmg ceases. Account the Will of the Flesh thine Enemy, and do not what the Desire in the Flesh Willeth, and then thou shalf bring » Death upon the Deathfiil Property in the Flesh . 28. Regard not any Scorn of the World \ as considering that it doth hut scorn thine Enemy , and that is become a Fool to it. Nay, do thou thyself account it thy Fool \ which Adam caused the£ to possess, and made to be thy false Heir. Cast out of the House the Son of the Bond - Woman , that strange Child which God did not give to be in the House of Life in Adam at the Beginning ; for the Son of the Bond - Woman must not inherit with the Son of the free- Woman.
329. The earthly Will is but the Son of the Bond - Woman . For the four Elements should have been Man’s Servants, but Adam hath brought them into the Sonship , or adopted them into himself. Therefore God said to Abraham , when He had opened the Covenaiit of the Promise in him; ‘ Cast out the Son of the ‘Bond-Woman, for he shall not inherit with the Son of the Free/ This Son of the Free is Christ , which God of his Qrace hath brought again into the Flesh for us, namely, a new or renewed Mind. Wherein the Will , viz., the eternal Will of the Soul, may draw and drink the Water of Life, of which Christ speaketh, saying, * Whosoever shall drink of this Water that I will give ^ him, it shall spring up in him, and be a Fountain of eternal ‘ Life/ This Fomitain is the Renovatio?i of the M hid or Will of the Soul. 30. Therefore I say, that all Fictions and Devices to come to Qodby, let them have what Name soever they will, which Men .contrive and invent for Ways to Cjod, are but lost Labour and vain Endeavours, without a new Mind . There is no other Way to (jod, but a new Mind, which turneth from Wickedness and fcntereth into Repentance for the Sins it hath committed. Which goeth forth from its Iniquity and Willeth it no more; but wrappetli its Will up in the Death of Christ , and with all Earnestness 54 The W'ay to Qhrist . 1 dieth from the Sin of the Soul in the Death of Christ , so that it Willeth Sin no more.
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.
125. God receiveth no Sinner into His Poiver and Virtue , unless the Shiner go forth from his Sins , and enter with the Desire into God. And then, 1 He will not cast out those that so 'come unto him/ He hath given to the Will an open Qate in Christ , saying, ‘ Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden with ‘ Sins/ and ‘ I will refresh you ; take my Yoke upon you/ that is, the Cross of the Enmity in the Flesh . This was the Yoke of Christ , which he had to bear for the Sins of all Men. This Cross or Yoke the resigned Will must also take upon- itself in the evil earthly sinful Flesh , and bear it after Christ in Patience and Hope of Deliverance. It must also continually break the Head of the Serpent , in and through Christ's Will and Spirit \ and kill . and destroy the earthly Will in God’s Anger \ not letting it rest Of True Resignation . 55 on a soft Bed when Sin is committed, and thinking to repait one Time or other. 26. No, no, the earthly Will groweth strong, fat, and zvanton upon this soft Bed. .But as soon as the Light of God shineth in thee, and showeth Sin to thee, the Will of thy Soul must sink itself down into the Passion and Death of Christ , and wrap itself up close therein. It must take the Passion of Christ into its Possession, and be a Lord over the Death of Sin by the Death of Christ , and kill and destroy it in the Death of Christ.
227. The Will of S in must die, though it be never so unwilling. Be at Enmity therefore with the voluptuous earthly Flesh ; give it not what it would have ;• let it fast and suffer Hunger. until its ticklmg ceases. Account the Will of the Flesh thine Enemy, and do not what the Desire in the Flesh Willeth, and then thou shalf bring » Death upon the Deathfiil Property in the Flesh . 28. Regard not any Scorn of the World \ as considering that it doth hut scorn thine Enemy , and that is become a Fool to it. Nay, do thou thyself account it thy Fool \ which Adam caused the£ to possess, and made to be thy false Heir. Cast out of the House the Son of the Bond - Woman , that strange Child which God did not give to be in the House of Life in Adam at the Beginning ; for the Son of the Bond - Woman must not inherit with the Son of the free- Woman.
329. The earthly Will is but the Son of the Bond - Woman . For the four Elements should have been Man’s Servants, but Adam hath brought them into the Sonship , or adopted them into himself. Therefore God said to Abraham , when He had opened the Covenaiit of the Promise in him; ‘ Cast out the Son of the ‘Bond-Woman, for he shall not inherit with the Son of the Free/ This Son of the Free is Christ , which God of his Qrace hath brought again into the Flesh for us, namely, a new or renewed Mind. Wherein the Will , viz., the eternal Will of the Soul, may draw and drink the Water of Life, of which Christ speaketh, saying, * Whosoever shall drink of this Water that I will give ^ him, it shall spring up in him, and be a Fountain of eternal ‘ Life/ This Fomitain is the Renovatio?i of the M hid or Will of the Soul. 30. Therefore I say, that all Fictions and Devices to come to Qodby, let them have what Name soever they will, which Men .contrive and invent for Ways to Cjod, are but lost Labour and vain Endeavours, without a new Mind . There is no other Way to (jod, but a new Mind, which turneth from Wickedness and fcntereth into Repentance for the Sins it hath committed. Which goeth forth from its Iniquity and Willeth it no more; but wrappetli its Will up in the Death of Christ , and with all Earnestness 54 The W'ay to Qhrist . 1 dieth from the Sin of the Soul in the Death of Christ , so that it Willeth Sin no more.
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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