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.