[232]. Theosoph. Sendbr. xii. §§ 8-20.
[233]. A full account of the persecution raised by Gregory Richter against Behmen, was drawn up by Cornelius Weissner, a doctor of medicine, and is appended by Franckenberg to his biography. A young man, who had married a relative of Behmen’s, had been so terrified by the threatenings of divine wrath launched at him by Richter, about some trifling money matter, that he fell into a profound melancholy. Behmen comforted the distressed baker, and ventured to remonstrate with the enraged primarius, becoming ever after a marked man. For seven years after the affair of the Aurora, in 1612, Behmen refrained from writing. Everything he published subsequently was produced between the years 1619 and 1624, inclusive.
[234]. Thus he thanks Christian Bernard for a small remittance of money.—Theos. Sendbr. ix. Sept. 12, 1620.
[235]. Apologia wider den Primarium zu Görlitz Gregorium Richter, written in 1624.
[236]. Vide Corn. Weissner’s Wahrhafte Relation, &c., and Franckenberg’s account of his last hours, § 29.
[237]. While regarding as infallibly certain the main features of the doctrine communicated to him, Behmen is quite ready to admit the imperfect character both of his knowledge and his setting forth thereof. Light was communicated to him, he said, by degrees, at uncertain intervals, and never un-mingled with obscurity.—Aurora, cap. vii. § 11; cap. x. § 26, and often elsewhere.
[238]. Aurora, x. §§ 44, 45.
[239]. See Aurora, cap. xix. §§ 26-45; cap. xxiii. § 86.
After speaking of the revolt of Lucifer as the cause of the present imperfection and admixture of natural evil in the world, by corrupting the influence of the Fountain-Spirits throughout our department of the universe, and of the blind and endangered condition of man consequent thereon, he adds,—‘But thou must not suppose that on this account the heavenly light in the Fountain-Spirits of God is utterly extinct. No; it is but a darkness which we, with our corrupt eyesight, cannot apprehend. But when God removes the darkness which thus broods above the light, and thine eyes are opened, then thou seest even on the spot where thou sittest, standest, or dost lie in thy room, the lovely face of God, and all the gates that open upon heaven. Thou needest not first lift thine eyes upwards to heaven, for it is written, ‘The word is near thee, even on thy lips and in thine heart;’ Deut. xxx. 14; Rom. x. 8. So near thee, indeed, is God, that the birth of the Holy Trinity takes place in thine heart also, and there all three persons are born,—Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’—Aurora, cap. x. §§ 57, 58.
[240]. ‘The spirit of man,’ says Behmen, ‘contains a spark from the power and light of God.’ The Holy Ghost is ‘creaturely’ within it when renewed, and it can therefore search into the depths of God and nature, as a child in its father’s house. In God, past, present, and future; breadth, depth, and height; far and near, are apprehended as one, and the holy soul of man sees them in like manner, although (in the present imperfect state) but partially. For the devil sometimes succeeds in smothering the seed of inward light.—Aurora, Vorrede, §§ 96-105.