JACOB BÖHME, OR BEHMEN.
(Vol. viii., p. 13.)
Some farther particulars respecting the writings of that remarkable character, who, according to your correspondent, "led astray William Law, and through him tinctured the religious philosophy of Coleridge, and from whom Schelling stole the corner-stones of his Philosophy of Nature," may perhaps interest the readers of "N. & Q."
Who Böhme, or Behmen, was, may be seen by a reference to Francis Okely's Memoir of him, and to the article in the Penny Cyclopædia (vol. v. p. 61.) written by Dr. Bialloblotzky; which, with the exception of a few trifling errors, is carefully compiled. The true character of his philosophy has been ably and fully described in the later writings of William Law, especially in his Animadversions on Dr. Trapp (at the end of An Appeal to all that Doubt or Disbelieve the Truths of Revelation); in The Way to Divine Knowledge; The Spirit of Love; his Letters; and in the fragment of a Dialogue, prefixed to the first of the four volumes in 4to. of Behmen's Works.
Behmen's writings first became generally known in this country by translations of the most important of them by a gentleman of the name of Ellistone, and of minor ones by Mr. Humphrey Blunden and others. Ellistone dying before he had completed the translation of the great work upon Genesis, it was continued by his cousin, John Sparrow, a barrister in the Temple; who also translated and published the remainder of Behmen's writings in the English language. Respecting these individuals, William Law, in a letter written in reply to one received from a Mr. Stephen Penny, speaks in the following terms:
"The translators of Jacob Behmen, Ellistone and Sparrow, are much to be honoured for their work; they had great piety and great abilities, and well apprehended their author, especially Ellistone: but the translation is too much loaded with words, and in many places the sense is mistaken.[[2]]
"A new translator of Jacob Behmen is not to have it in intention to make his author more intelligible by softening or refining his language. His style is what it is, strange and uncommon; not because he wanted learning and skill in words, but because what he saw and conceived was quite new and strange, never seen or spoken of before; and therefore if he was to put it down in writing, words must be used to signify that which they had never done before.
"If it shall please God that I undertake this work, I shall only endeavour to make Jacob Behmen speak as he would have spoken, had he wrote in English. Secondly, to guard the reader at certain places from wrong apprehensions of his meaning, by adding here and there a note, as occasion requires. Thirdly, and chiefly, by Prefaces or Introductions to prepare and direct the reader in the true use of these writings. This last is most of all necessary, and yet would be entirely needless, if the reader would but observe Jacob Behmen's own directions. For there is not an error, defect, or wrong turn, which the reader can fall into, in the use of these books, but is most plainly set before him by Jacob Behmen.
"Many persons of learning in the last century read Jacob Behmen with great earnestness; but it was only, as it were, to steal from him certain mysteries of Nature, and to run away with the philosopher's stone; and yet nowhere could they see the folly and impossibility of their attempt so fully shown them, as by Jacob Behmen himself."
A well-engraved portrait of John Sparrow may occasionally be met with in some of the small quarto English treatises of Behmen.
The four-volume edition of Jacob Behmen's Works, in large 4to., 1764-81, is an unsatisfactory performance; having, in fact, nothing in common with the projected edition by William Law, as expressed in the above letter. Nevertheless, it has been useful in many respects; especially as being instrumental in making the productions of Dion. Andreas Freher more generally known. This edition, moreover, is incomplete; as several important treatises, besides his Letters, are entirely omitted. The order, too, in which the pieces are inserted from the Book of the Incarnation is altogether wrong.
It is a common, but erroneous supposition, that William Law was the editor of this edition. From his work, The Way to Divine Knowledge, printed some years after the date of the letter quoted above, it appears that he intended to publish a new and correct translation of Behmen's Works; but did not survive to accomplish it. He died in 1761, before the first of the four volumes was published; and if he were in any way identified with it, it could only be by some one or two of his corrections (found in his own copy of the Works after his decease) being incorporated therein; but of this there is some uncertainty. The Symbols, or Emblems, which are stated in the title-page of this edition to have been "left by Mr. Law," were not his production, but merely copies of the originals themselves. These were all designed by the above Dionysius Andreas Freher, a learned German, who had resided in this country from about the year 1695 till his death in 1728, in illustration of his own systematic elucidations of the ground and principles of the central philosophy of Deity and Nature, opened as a new original, and final revelation from God, in "his chosen instrument, Behmen." It was, I believe, from Freher, that Francis Lee (see "N. & Q." Vol. ii., p. 355.) became so deeply versed in the scope and design of high supersensual and mystical truth. From the year 1740, Freher, by his writings, demonstrations and diagrams, may be considered the closet-tutor of William Law at his philosophical retreat at King's Cliffe, in respect to the great mysteries of Truth and Nature, the origin and constitution of things, glanced at in what are popularly called Law's later or mystical writings.
Next to Behmen's Works, and coupled with those of Law, Freher's writings and illustrations must, in regard to theosophical science, be considered the most valuable and important in existence. Freher also was personally acquainted with Gichtel, who was deeply imbued with the philosophy of Jacob Behmen, viz. "the fundamental opening of all the powers that work both in Nature and Grace;" and who, perhaps more than any other individual, experimentally lived and fathomed it.
Freher's original manuscripts and copies of others (besides those formerly in the possession of William Law), as well as the manuscripts of Law and of Francis Lee, and some original documents relating to the Philadelphian mystic author, Mrs. Jane Lead (Lee's mother-in-law) are now in the possession of Mr. Christopher Walton, of Ludgate Street; who, I understand, is on the eve of completing, for private circulation, a voluminous account of these celebrated individuals. It will also contain, if I am correctly informed, a representation of the whole nature and scope of mystical divinity and theosophical science, as apprehensible from an orthodox evangelical—or, in a word, a standard point of view; as likewise of the nature and relations of the modern experimental transcendentalism of Animal Magnetism, with its inductions of the trance and clairvoyance, in respect to the astral as well as Divine magic; with other similar recondite, but now lost, philosophy. But to return to Behmen.
The publication of the large edition of his Works in question was undertaken at the sole expense of Mrs. Hutcheson, one of the two ladies who were Mr. Law's companions and friends in his retirement at King's Cliffe, out of respect to his memory; and who furnished the books Mr. Law left behind him relating to this object. The chief editor was a Mr. George Ward, assisted by a Mr. Thomas Langcake, two former friends and admirers of Law; who occasionally superintended his pieces through the press, being then resident in London. And the reason of this edition not being completed was, that both Mrs. Hutcheson and Mr. Ward died about the time of the publication of the fourth volume; Mrs. Gibbon[[3]], the aunt of the historian, it appears, not being willing to continue the publication. All that these parties did as editors was, to take the original translations, change the phraseology here and there without reference to the German original (which language it is supposed they did not understand), omit certain portions of the translator's Prefaces, alter the capital letters of a few words, and conduct the treatises through the press.
The literary productions which have commanded the admiration and approbation of such deep thinkers as Sir Isaac Newton[[4]], William Law, Schelling, Hegel, and Coleridge, may perhaps, before long, be thought worthy of republication. What is required is a well-edited and correct translation of Behmen's entire Works, coupled with those of Freher, his great illustrator, (including also the Emblems, &c. of Gichtel's German edition), and preceded by those of Law, which treat upon the same subject, namely:—1. Answer to Hoadley on the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 2. Christian Regeneration. 3. Animadversions on Dr. Trapp. 4. The Appeal. 5. The Way to Divine Knowledge. 6. The Spirit of Love. 7. Confutation of Warburton. 8. Letters.
To conclude. The following are the terms in which William Law speaks of Behmen's writings in one of his letters:
"Therein is opened the true ground of the unchangeable distinction between God and Nature, making all nature, whether temporal or eternal, its own proof that it is not, cannot be, God, but purely and solely the want of God; and can be nothing else in itself but a restless painful want, till a supernatural God manifests himself in it. This is a doctrine which the learned of all ages have known nothing of; not a book, ancient or modern, in all our libraries, has so much as attempted to open the ground of nature to show its birth and state, and its essential unalterable distinction from the one abyssal supernatural God; and how all the glories, powers, and perfections of the hidden, unapproachable God, have their wonderful manifestation in nature and creature."
And on another occasion:
"In the Revelation made to this wonderful man, the first beginning of all things in eternity is opened; the whole state, the rise, workings, and progress of all Nature is revealed; and every doctrine, mystery, and precept of the Gospel is found, not to have sprung from any arbitrary appointment, but to have its eternal, unalterable ground and reason in Nature. And God appears to save us by the methods of the Gospel, because there was no other possible way to save us in all the possibility of Nature."
And again:
"Now, though the difference between God and Nature has always been supposed and believed, yet the true ground of such distinction, or the why, the how, and in what they are essentially different, and must be so to all eternity, was to be found in no books, till the goodness of God, in a way not less than that of miracle, made a poor illiterate man, in the simplicity of a child, to open and relate the deep mysterious ground of all things."
Thus much upon the "reveries" of our "poor possessed cobbler." It may be well to add, that Freher's writings (in sequence to those of Law above named) are all but essential for the proper understanding of Behmen, especially of his descriptions of the generation of Nature, as to its seven properties, two co-eternal principles, and three constituent parts: which is the deepest and most difficult point of all others to apprehend rightly (that is, with intellectual clearness, as well as sensitively in our own spiritual regeneration), and indeed the key to every mystery of truth and life.
J. Yeowell.
Hoxton.
Footnote 2:[(return)]
This remark especially applies to the Answer to the fourth of the Theosophic Questions.
Footnote 3:[(return)]
Among the papers of this lady were found, after her decease, several letters to her from her nephew, Edward Gibbon, the historian, and his friend Lord Sheffield, from which it would appear that the religious views of the former had, at least from the year 1788, undergone considerable change. From one of these interesting letters, shortly to be published, I have been kindly permitted to make the following extract:—"Whatever you may have been told of my opinions, I can assure you with truth, that I consider religion as the best guide of youth, and the best support of old age; that I firmly believe there is less real happiness in the business and pleasures of the world, than in the life which you have chosen of devotion and retirement."
Footnote 4:[(return)]
William Law, in the Appendix to the second edition of his Appeal to all that Doubt or Disbelieve the Truths of the Gospel, p. 314., 1756, mentions that among the papers of Newton (now in Trinity College, Cambridge) were found many autograph extracts from the Works of Behmen. This is also confirmed in an unpublished letter, now before me, from Law to Dr. Cheyne in answer to his inquiries on this points. Law affirms that Newton derived his system of fundamental powers from Behmen; and that he avoided mentioning Behmen as the originator of his system, lest it should come into disrepute.