Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries Part 17

"Jacob Boehme est le seul, au moins dont on ait eu les ecrits jusqu'a lui, auquel Dieu ait decouvert le fond de la nature, tant des choses spirituelles, que des corporelles."--Peter Poiret, in a note at the end of his _Theologie germanique_, 1700.

"As a chosen servant of G.o.d, Jacob Boehme must be placed among those who have received the highest measures of light, wisdom, and knowledge from above. . . . All that lay in religion and nature as a mystery unsearchable was in its deepest ground opened to this instrument of G.o.d."--William Law, _Works_ (ed. 1893), vi. p. 205.

"To Jacob Boehme belongs the merit of having taught more profoundly than any one else before or after him the truth that back of and behind all that has come to appear of good and evil there is an immaterial World which is the essence and reality of all that is."--Franz von Baader, _Werke_ (Leipzig, 1852), iii. p. 382.

Novalis wrote in a letter to Ludwig Tieck in 1800: "Man sieht durchaus in ihm [Jakob Bohme] den gewaltigen Fruhling mit seinen quellenden, treibenden, bildenden, und mischenden Kraften, die von innen heraus die Welt gebaren. Ein echtes Chaos voll dunkler Begier und wunderbarem Leben--einen wahren auseinandergehenden Mikrokosmos."--Quoted from Edgar Ederheimer's _Jakob Boehme und die Romantiker_ (1904), p. 57.

[11] His English translators in the seventeenth century variously spelled his name Behm, Behme, and Behmen. This latter spelling was adopted in the so-called Law Edition of 1764, and has thus come into common use in England and America.

[12] Boehme refers frequently to "the writings of high masters," whom he says he read (_Aurora_, x. 45), and he often names Schwenckfeld and Weigel in particular. See especially _The Second Epistle_, sec. 54-62

[13] _Memoirs of the Life, Death and Burial, and Wonderful Writings of Jacob Behmen_, translated by Francis Okeley (1780), p. 22.

[14] _Memoirs_, p. 2.

[15] _Memoirs_, p. 6. Von Franckenberg says that Boehme himself told him this incident.

[16] Ibid. pp. 4-5. The reader will have noted the long history of this phrase, "Sabbath of the soul."

[17] _Ibid._ p. 7.

[18] _Memoirs_, p. 8. Paracelsus taught that the inner nature of things might be seen by one who has become an organ of the Universal Mind. He says: "Hidden things which cannot be perceived by the physical senses may be found through the sidereal body, through whose organism we may look into nature in the same way as the sun s.h.i.+nes through a gla.s.s. The inner nature of everything may be known through Magic [The Divine Magia] and the power of inner sight."--Hartmann's _Life of Paracelsus_ (1896), p. 53.

[19] He uses this word _Seeker_ hundreds of times in his writings.

[20] _Second Epistle_, sec. 6-8.

[21] _Aurora_, xix. 10-13. He goes on in the following sections to describe how for twelve years this insight "grew in his soul like a young tree before the exact understanding of it all" was arrived at.

[22] _The Fifth Epistle_, 50.

[23] _Aurora_, xi. 146.

[24] _Ibid._ xi. 6.

[25] Aurora, xxii. 47.

[26] In the _Aurora_ Boehme speaks of the Flash as an experience: "As the lightning flash appears and disappears again in a moment, so it is also with the soul. In its battle the soul suddenly penetrates through the clouds and sees G.o.d like a flash of Light."--Ibid. xi. 76.

[27] _Memoirs_, p. 8.

[28] Evidently the "flash" of the year 1610 was not the last one. In fact, he seems to have had frequent ecstasies.

[29] _The Second Epistle_, 9-10.

[30] _Third Epistle_, 35.

[31] See especially _Signatura rerum_, ix. 63, and _Forty Questions_, xxvi. 2-3 and x.x.x. 3 and 5.

[32] _Third Epistle_, 32. The _Memoirs_ describe how it was copied by "a Gentleman of some rank" [Carl von Endern].

[33] _Memoirs_, p. 9.

[34] Preserved in the Diary of Bartholomew Scultetus, then Mayor of Gorlitz (Ueberfeld's edition, 1730). This Diary does not record any actual banishment of Boehme. The data for our knowledge of the persecutions of Boehme are found in a personal narrative written by his friend Cornelius Weissner, M.D.--_Memoirs_, pp. 39-50.

[35] _Aurora_, xiii. 7-10.

[36] _Ibid._ x.x.xvi. 152.

[37] _Third Epistle_, 7.

[38] _Fifteenth Epistle_, 18.

This "new smell in the life of G.o.d" often occurs in Boehme's writings. Compare George Fox's testimony, "The whole creation had a new smell." For further comparisons see pp. 221-227.

[39] The following is a complete list of his writings:

1612. _The Aurora_.

1619. _The Three Principles of the Divine Essence_.

1620. _The Threefold Life of Man; Forty Questions; The Incarnation of Jesus Christ; The Suffering, Death and Resurrection of Christ; The Tree of Faith; Six Points; Heavenly and Earthly Mysterium; The Last Times_.

1621. _De signatura rerum; The Four Complexions; Apology to Balthazar Tilken_ in 2 parts; _Consideration on Esaias Stiefel's Book_.

1622. Sec. _Apology to Stiefel; Repentance; Resignation; Regeneration_.

1623. _Predestination and Election of G.o.d; A Short Compendium of Repentance; The Mysterium magnum_.

1624. _The Clavis; The Supersensual Life; Divine Contemplation; Baptism and the Supper; A Dialogue Between the Enlightened and Unenlightened Soul; An Apology on the Book of Repentance; 177 Theosophic Questions; An Epitome of the Mysterium magnum; The Holy Week; An Exposition of the Threefold World_.

Undated. _An Apology to Esaias Stiefel; The Last Judgment; Epistles_.

[40] _Thirty-first Epistle_, 10.

[41] _The Third Epistle_, 30.

[42] _Ibid._ 29.

[43] There are as many blasphemies in the shoemaker's book as there are lines. It smells of shoemaker's wax and filthy blacking. May this intolerable stench be far from us.

[44] _Thirty-fourth Epistle_, 5.

[45] _Thirty-third Epistle_.

[46] _Thirty-fourth Epistle_, 16 and 21.

[47] Weissner's Narrative, _Memoirs_, p. 49.

[48] _Ibid._ p. 58.