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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.
151. The Scholar.— Whither shall the Devils and all the damned be thrown, when the Place of this World is the Kingdom of Christ, and as such shall be glorified ? Shall they be cast out of the Place of this World? or shall Christ have and manifest His Dominion out of the Sphere or Place of this World ? The Master. — Hell shall remain in the Place or Sphere of this World everywhere, but hidden to the Kingdom of Heaven, as the Night is hidden in and to the Day. ‘ The Light shall ‘shine for ever in the Darkness, but the Darkness can never ‘ comprehend, or reach, it.’ And the Light is the Kmgdom of Christ ;* but the Darkness is Hell, wherein the Devils and the Wicked dwell ; and thus they shall be suppressed by the Kingdom of Christ, and made His Footstool, vis., a Reproach. 52. The Scholar. — How shall all People* and Nations be brought to fudgment ? * The Master.— The Eternal Word of God, out of which every Spiritual Creaturely Life hath proceeded, will move itself at that Hour, according to Love and Anger, in every Life which is come •out of the Eternity, and will draw every Creature before the Judgment of Christ, to be sentenced by this Motion of the Word. 1 12 The Way to Qhrist . _c
2The Life will then be manifested in all its Works , arrd every Soul shall see and feel its Judgment and Sentence in itself. For the Judgment is, indeed, immediately at the Departure of the Body , manifested in and to every Soul : And the Last Judgment is but a Return of the Spiritual Body , and r a Separation of the World , when the Evil shall be separated from the Qood y in the Substance of the World , and of the human Body , and every Thing enter into its eternal Receptacle . And thus is it a Mani - festhtion of the Mystery of God in every Substance and Life . 53. The Scholar. How will the Sentence be pronounced ? Ti-IE MASTER. Here consider the W ords of Christ. ‘ He will • ‘ say to those on his Right Hand^ Come, ye blessed of my ‘ Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the Founda- ‘ tion of the World. For I was hungry and ye gave me Meat, I 4 was thirsty and ye gave me Drink ; I was a Stranger and # jjg: * ‘took me in ; naked and ye clothed me. I was £ 1 ( 5 :, and ye * visited me, in Prison, and ye came unto me. ‘Then shall they answer him, saying LORD, when saw we thee ‘hungry, thirsty, a Stranger, naked, sick, or in Prison, and 4 ministered thus unto thee ? ‘ Then shall the King answer and say unto them ; inasmuch ‘ as he have done it unto one of the least of these my Brethren, ‘ ye have done it unto me.
3‘And unto the wicked on his Left Hand he wiK say, depart ‘ from me, ye cursed, into everlasting Fire, prepared for the ‘ Devil and his Angels. For I was hungry, thirsty, a Stranger, ‘ naked, sick, and in Prison, and ye ministered not unto me. ‘ And they shall also answer him and say, When did we see ‘ thee thus, and ministered not unto thee ? ‘And he will answer them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch 4 as ye have not done it unto one of the least of these, ye did it ‘ not to me. ‘ And these shall depart into everlasting Punishment, but the 4 righteous into Life eternal.’ 54. The Scholar. — L oving Master, pray tell me why Christ saith, ‘ what you have done to the least of these you have done 4 to me ; and what you have not done to them, neither have you 4 done it to me.’ And how doth a Man this so, as he that doeth it to Christ himself \ The Master . — Christ dwelleth really and essentially in the Faith of those that wholly yield up themselves to Him, and giveth them His Flesh for Food, and His Blood for Drink ; and thus possesseth the Qround of their Faith , according to the Interior or inward Man . And a Christian is called a Branch of the Vine Christ , and a Christian , because Christ dwelleth spiriOf the Super-Sensual Life, i l.3 -
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.
151. The Scholar.— Whither shall the Devils and all the damned be thrown, when the Place of this World is the Kingdom of Christ, and as such shall be glorified ? Shall they be cast out of the Place of this World? or shall Christ have and manifest His Dominion out of the Sphere or Place of this World ? The Master. — Hell shall remain in the Place or Sphere of this World everywhere, but hidden to the Kingdom of Heaven, as the Night is hidden in and to the Day. ‘ The Light shall ‘shine for ever in the Darkness, but the Darkness can never ‘ comprehend, or reach, it.’ And the Light is the Kmgdom of Christ ;* but the Darkness is Hell, wherein the Devils and the Wicked dwell ; and thus they shall be suppressed by the Kingdom of Christ, and made His Footstool, vis., a Reproach. 52. The Scholar. — How shall all People* and Nations be brought to fudgment ? * The Master.— The Eternal Word of God, out of which every Spiritual Creaturely Life hath proceeded, will move itself at that Hour, according to Love and Anger, in every Life which is come •out of the Eternity, and will draw every Creature before the Judgment of Christ, to be sentenced by this Motion of the Word. 1 12 The Way to Qhrist . _c
2The Life will then be manifested in all its Works , arrd every Soul shall see and feel its Judgment and Sentence in itself. For the Judgment is, indeed, immediately at the Departure of the Body , manifested in and to every Soul : And the Last Judgment is but a Return of the Spiritual Body , and r a Separation of the World , when the Evil shall be separated from the Qood y in the Substance of the World , and of the human Body , and every Thing enter into its eternal Receptacle . And thus is it a Mani - festhtion of the Mystery of God in every Substance and Life . 53. The Scholar. How will the Sentence be pronounced ? Ti-IE MASTER. Here consider the W ords of Christ. ‘ He will • ‘ say to those on his Right Hand^ Come, ye blessed of my ‘ Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the Founda- ‘ tion of the World. For I was hungry and ye gave me Meat, I 4 was thirsty and ye gave me Drink ; I was a Stranger and # jjg: * ‘took me in ; naked and ye clothed me. I was £ 1 ( 5 :, and ye * visited me, in Prison, and ye came unto me. ‘Then shall they answer him, saying LORD, when saw we thee ‘hungry, thirsty, a Stranger, naked, sick, or in Prison, and 4 ministered thus unto thee ? ‘ Then shall the King answer and say unto them ; inasmuch ‘ as he have done it unto one of the least of these my Brethren, ‘ ye have done it unto me.
3‘And unto the wicked on his Left Hand he wiK say, depart ‘ from me, ye cursed, into everlasting Fire, prepared for the ‘ Devil and his Angels. For I was hungry, thirsty, a Stranger, ‘ naked, sick, and in Prison, and ye ministered not unto me. ‘ And they shall also answer him and say, When did we see ‘ thee thus, and ministered not unto thee ? ‘And he will answer them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch 4 as ye have not done it unto one of the least of these, ye did it ‘ not to me. ‘ And these shall depart into everlasting Punishment, but the 4 righteous into Life eternal.’ 54. The Scholar. — L oving Master, pray tell me why Christ saith, ‘ what you have done to the least of these you have done 4 to me ; and what you have not done to them, neither have you 4 done it to me.’ And how doth a Man this so, as he that doeth it to Christ himself \ The Master . — Christ dwelleth really and essentially in the Faith of those that wholly yield up themselves to Him, and giveth them His Flesh for Food, and His Blood for Drink ; and thus possesseth the Qround of their Faith , according to the Interior or inward Man . And a Christian is called a Branch of the Vine Christ , and a Christian , because Christ dwelleth spiriOf the Super-Sensual Life, i l.3 -
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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