(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.