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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.
1* the Ccfurts of my God at his Feet, that I may serve my Lord i in that which he commandeth me. I will know nothing of my- ‘ self, that the Will and Power of my Lord may lead and guide ‘ me, and that I may only do what God doth through me, and 6 will have done by me. I will sleep in myself until the Lord ‘ awaken me with his Spirit ; and if he will not, then will I look *' up to him in Silence, and wait his Commands.’ 51. Beloved Brethren, Men at this Time boast much of Faith; but where is it to be found ? The Modern Faith is but the History. Where is that Child, which believeth that Jesus is born ? If that Child were in Being, and did believe that Jesus is born, it would also draw near to the sweet Child Jesus , and receive him and nurse him. 52. Alas! The Faith of This Day is but Historical \ a mere Assent to tfye Matter of Fact that Jesus Christ lived and died, that the Jews killed him, tfyat he left this World , and is not King on Earth in the outward Man ; but that Men may do what they list, and ‘need not die frojn Sin, and their evil Lusts. All this the -wicked Child Self rejoiceth in, that it may fatten the Devil by living deliciously . 53. This showeth plainly that true Faith was never weaker since Christs Time, than it is now . When nevertheless the World crieth aloud, and saith, ‘ We have got the true Faith and contend about a Child , with a Contention, than which there were never worse, since Men were on Earth.
254. If thou art truly Zion , and hast that new born Child which was lost and is found again, then let it be seen in Power and Virtue. Let us all openly see the sweet Child Jesus brought forth by thee, and that thou art his Nurse . If not, then the Children in Christ will say, thou hast found nothing but the Cradle of the Child \ that is, the History . 55. Where hast thou the sweet Child Jesus , thou that art so exalted with the History , and with thy false and seeming Faith? O Sow will the Child Jesus visit thee one Day in the Father's •Property, the Property of Anger , in thy own Ttirba which thou hast fatted ! It calleth thee now in Love, but thou wilt not hear, for thine Ears are stopped with Covetousness and Voluptuousness . Therefore, the Sound of the Trumpet shall one Day alarm thee with the hard Thmiderclap of thy Turba, and rouse thee up, if haply thou wilt then seek and find the sweet Child Jesus . 56. Beloved Brethren, this is a Time of seeking, of seeking and of finding. It is a Time of Earnestness ; whom it toucheth, it toucheth home . He that watcheth shall hear and see it ; but he that sleepeth in Sin, and saith in the fat Days of his Belly, ‘ All is 4 Peace and quiet; We hear no Sound from the Lord,’ shall be 58 The Way to Qhrist . blind. But the Voice of the Lord hath sounded in all the Ends of the Earth, and a Smoke riseth and in the midst of the Smoke there is a great Brightness and Splendour. Hallelujah. Amen.
3‘ Shout unto the Lord in Zion, for all Mouptains and Hills are ‘ full of his Glory : He flourished! like a Green Branch, and who ‘ shall hinder it ?’ Hallelujah. THE T H I R D BOOK O F REGENERATION, O’R THE NEW.- BIRTH, SHOWING How he that earnestly seeketh Salvation , must suffer himself to be brought out of the confused and contentious Babel , by the Spirit of Christ , that he may be born anew in the Spirit of Christy and live to Him only. Written in the German Language, (Anno. 1622.) By JACOB BOEHME /^sOME out of Babylon , my People, that ye be not Partakers of her Sins , and that ye receive not of her Plagues ; for her Sins have reached unto Heaven , and God hath remembered her Iniquity. — Rev. xviii. 4. The Author’s Preface to the Reader. T HOUGH I have in my other Writings set down a clear description of Regeneration , or the New- Birth, from the Ground thereof; yet because everyone hath them not, neither 'hath everyone the Capacity to understand them ; I have therefore, as a Service to the simple Children of Christ, here set down a short §um concerning the New-Birth. But if any desire to search the deep Ground from whence all floweth, and have the Gift to understand it, Tet theili read these Books following. i. The Three Principles of the Divine Essence. 2. The three-fold Life of Man. 3. The forty Questions of the Original Essence, Substance, Nature, and Property of the Soul.
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.
1* the Ccfurts of my God at his Feet, that I may serve my Lord i in that which he commandeth me. I will know nothing of my- ‘ self, that the Will and Power of my Lord may lead and guide ‘ me, and that I may only do what God doth through me, and 6 will have done by me. I will sleep in myself until the Lord ‘ awaken me with his Spirit ; and if he will not, then will I look *' up to him in Silence, and wait his Commands.’ 51. Beloved Brethren, Men at this Time boast much of Faith; but where is it to be found ? The Modern Faith is but the History. Where is that Child, which believeth that Jesus is born ? If that Child were in Being, and did believe that Jesus is born, it would also draw near to the sweet Child Jesus , and receive him and nurse him. 52. Alas! The Faith of This Day is but Historical \ a mere Assent to tfye Matter of Fact that Jesus Christ lived and died, that the Jews killed him, tfyat he left this World , and is not King on Earth in the outward Man ; but that Men may do what they list, and ‘need not die frojn Sin, and their evil Lusts. All this the -wicked Child Self rejoiceth in, that it may fatten the Devil by living deliciously . 53. This showeth plainly that true Faith was never weaker since Christs Time, than it is now . When nevertheless the World crieth aloud, and saith, ‘ We have got the true Faith and contend about a Child , with a Contention, than which there were never worse, since Men were on Earth.
254. If thou art truly Zion , and hast that new born Child which was lost and is found again, then let it be seen in Power and Virtue. Let us all openly see the sweet Child Jesus brought forth by thee, and that thou art his Nurse . If not, then the Children in Christ will say, thou hast found nothing but the Cradle of the Child \ that is, the History . 55. Where hast thou the sweet Child Jesus , thou that art so exalted with the History , and with thy false and seeming Faith? O Sow will the Child Jesus visit thee one Day in the Father's •Property, the Property of Anger , in thy own Ttirba which thou hast fatted ! It calleth thee now in Love, but thou wilt not hear, for thine Ears are stopped with Covetousness and Voluptuousness . Therefore, the Sound of the Trumpet shall one Day alarm thee with the hard Thmiderclap of thy Turba, and rouse thee up, if haply thou wilt then seek and find the sweet Child Jesus . 56. Beloved Brethren, this is a Time of seeking, of seeking and of finding. It is a Time of Earnestness ; whom it toucheth, it toucheth home . He that watcheth shall hear and see it ; but he that sleepeth in Sin, and saith in the fat Days of his Belly, ‘ All is 4 Peace and quiet; We hear no Sound from the Lord,’ shall be 58 The Way to Qhrist . blind. But the Voice of the Lord hath sounded in all the Ends of the Earth, and a Smoke riseth and in the midst of the Smoke there is a great Brightness and Splendour. Hallelujah. Amen.
3‘ Shout unto the Lord in Zion, for all Mouptains and Hills are ‘ full of his Glory : He flourished! like a Green Branch, and who ‘ shall hinder it ?’ Hallelujah. THE T H I R D BOOK O F REGENERATION, O’R THE NEW.- BIRTH, SHOWING How he that earnestly seeketh Salvation , must suffer himself to be brought out of the confused and contentious Babel , by the Spirit of Christ , that he may be born anew in the Spirit of Christy and live to Him only. Written in the German Language, (Anno. 1622.) By JACOB BOEHME /^sOME out of Babylon , my People, that ye be not Partakers of her Sins , and that ye receive not of her Plagues ; for her Sins have reached unto Heaven , and God hath remembered her Iniquity. — Rev. xviii. 4. The Author’s Preface to the Reader. T HOUGH I have in my other Writings set down a clear description of Regeneration , or the New- Birth, from the Ground thereof; yet because everyone hath them not, neither 'hath everyone the Capacity to understand them ; I have therefore, as a Service to the simple Children of Christ, here set down a short §um concerning the New-Birth. But if any desire to search the deep Ground from whence all floweth, and have the Gift to understand it, Tet theili read these Books following. i. The Three Principles of the Divine Essence. 2. The three-fold Life of Man. 3. The forty Questions of the Original Essence, Substance, Nature, and Property of the Soul.
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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