JACOB BOEHME'S INFLUENCE IN ENGLAND
The first appearance in English of any of the writings of Jacob Boehme
was in 1645, when a tiny volume was issued with the title: _Two
Theosophical Epistles, Englished_.
There had appeared a year earlier (1644) a seven-page biography of
Boehme which was the first presentation of him to the English reader.
This brief sketch contains the well-known incidents which became the
stock material for the later accounts of his life.[1] It also contained
the following quaint description of Boehme which was the model for all
the portraits of the Teutonic philosopher in the English biographies of
him: "The stature of his outward body was almost of no Personage; his
person was little and leane, with browes somewhat inbowed; high
Temples, somewhat hauk-nosed: His eyes were gray and somewhat heaven
blew, and otherwise as the Windows in Solomon's Temple: He had a thin
Beard; a small low Voyce. His Speech was lovely. He was modest in his
Behaviour, humble in his conversation and meeke in his heart. His
spirit was highly enlightened by God, as is to be seen and discerned in
the Divine Light out of his writings."
The slender volume of _Theosophical Epistles_ was followed by another
little book issued a year later (1646), {209} consisting of a Discourse
delivered in Latin in the Schools at Cambridge by Charles Hotham,
Rector of Wigan. This Discourse was translated into English by the
author's brother, Justice Durant Hotham, and was published under the
title: _Introduction to Teutonic Philosophy, or A Determination
concerning the Original of the Soul_, Englished by D. F. [Durant
Frater], 1650. This interesting little volume, full of quaint phrase
and strange speculation, reflects throughout its pages the profound
influence of Boehme on these two brothers. The Preface to the
Englished edition written by Justice Hotham not only shows specific
marks of Boehme's influence upon a high-minded and scholarly man, but
it also reveals in an impressive way a type of thought that was very
prevalent in England at this period of commotion. "There are," Justice
Hotham says, "two islands of exceeding danger, yet built upon and
inhabited and defended as part of the main continent of Truth. The
first is called: 'I believe as the Church believeth.' Happy man whom
so easie labour hath set on the shore of wisdom! The other island is
called: 'whatsoever the Church believes that will I not believe.'"
Both these "islands" seem to him "exceeding dangerous." To adopt as
truth what the Church has believed, solely because the Church has
believed it, to forego the personal quest and to arrive at "the shores
of wisdom" without the venturous voyage, is "too easie labour" for the
soul. But, nevertheless, he feels that the opposite danger--the danger
of negating a truth merely because the Church affirms it--is even more
serious. It is wise to maintain an attitude of "much reverence" toward
the "unanimous consent of good and pious men in sacred matters." He
suggests that the way of wisdom consists in making the "I believe" of
the Church "neither a fetter nor a scandel." "May I be," he says, "in
the bed-route of those Seekers that, distrusting the known and
experienced deceits of their own Reason, walk unfettered in the quest
of truth, . . . not hunting those poor soules with Dogge and speare
whose dimme sight hath led them into desert and unbeated {210} paths."
This was in all probability the Justice Hotham of whom George Fox
wrote: "He was a pretty tender man yt had had some experiences of God's
workeinge in his hearte: & after yt I had some discourse with him off
ye things of God hee tooke mee Into his Closett & saide _hee had knowne
yt principle_ [of the Light] _this 10 yeere_: & hee was glad yt ye
Lorde did now publish it abroade to ye people."[2]
Like his Teutonic master, Justice Hotham distrusts Reason and Sense as
spiritual guides. They are at best, he says, "but guides of the night,
dim lights set up, far distant from Truth's stately mansion, to lead
poor groping souls in this world's affairs." The surer Guide is within
the soul itself, for the soul of man, he insists, has "a noble descent
from eternal essences" and "our nobel Genealogy should mind us of our
Father's House and make us weary of tutelage under hairy Faunes and
cloven-footed Satyres."[3] He shows that he has lost all interest in
theological speculations that assume a God remote in time and space, a
God who once created a world and left it to go to ruin. He reminds his
readers that the God in whom he believes is "yet alive and still
speaks."[4] In the light of this Preface, in which he declares that he
has "suckt in truth from divinest philosophy" from his childhood, it is
not strange that he welcomed Fox, when the latter appeared in Yorkshire
in 1651, proclaiming an inward Light and a present God near at hand,
nor is it surprising that Hotham said to the young prophet of the
inward Guide: "If God had not raised uppe this principle of light and
life, ye nation had beene overspread with rantism . . . but this
principle of truth overthrew ye roote & grounde of there [_i.e._ the
Ranters'] principle."[5]
The enthusiasm of Justice Hotham for his Teutonic master gets fervid
expression at the end of his Preface as follows: "Whatever the thrice
great Hermes [Hermes Trismegistus] delivered as oracles from his
prophetical tripos, or Pythagoras spake by authority or {211} Socrates
debated or Aristotle affirmed; yea, whatever divine Plato prophesied or
Plotinus proved: this and all this, or a far higher and profounder
philosophy is (I think) contained in the Teutonick's writings. And if
there be any friendly medium which can possibly reconcile these ancient
differences between the nobler wisdom which hath fixt her Palace in
Holy Writ and her stubborn handmaid, Naturall Reason: this happy
marriage of the Spirit and Soul, this wonderful consent of discords in
one harmony, we owe in great measure to Teutonicus his skill!"
The central problem of the _Discourse_, written by the brother, Charles
Hotham, is the origin of the soul. After the manner of his German
teacher, the English disciple finds the origin of man's soul in "the
bottomless, immeasurable Abyss of the Godhead," in "the great deep of
the perpetually eternal God." Man is an epitome of the universe. He
unites in himself all the contrary principles of the worlds visible and
invisible, he is a unity of body and soul, a centre of light and
darkness, and in him is a "supreme region," or "Divine Principle," "by
the mediation of which man has direct fellowship with God." In man,
who thus epitomizes all the spheres and principles of the universe,
"God, as in a glasse, hath a lively and delightful prospect of His own
lovely visage and incomprehensible Beauty." Finally, again, the
disciple reflects the constant teaching of Boehme that everything in
the visible world is a symbol of a fundamental and eternal World.
Durant Hotham showed the full measure of his devotion to his German
master in the _Life of Jacob Behmen_ which he wrote in 1653.[6] It is,
however, much more important for the insight which it gives of the
inner life of the Yorkshire Justice than for any biographical
information it furnishes of Boehme himself. Hotham thinks that in
Boehme he has discovered a new type of Christian Saint--"one who led a
saint-like life in much sweet communion {212} with God," while he
declares that many of those who "get admission into the Calendar by the
synodical jurisdiction of those who claim also to hold the bunch of
keys to the bigger Heaven" are hardly ripe for canonization--"As for
many who in these last ages have termed themselves saints--what shift
God may make of them in heaven, I know not (He can do much)--but if I
may speak unfeignedly, they are so unmortified and untrue of word and
deed that they are found untoward members for a true Commonwealth and
civil Society here on Earth."[7]
The type of saint the Justice admires is one who refuses utterly to
choose the path of least resistance, one who will not be "a messenger
of eternal happiness at a cheap rate," but rather one who comes to
challenge the easy world, to fight evil customs and entrenched systems
and to win "the Land which the Devil holds in possession"; and, with
the name of Jacob Boehme, he thinks he can "begin a new roll of Civil
Saints," hoping, he says, that in these last generations "much company"
may be added to the bead roll thus happily started.
Two points stand out clearly as central ideas of Justice Hotham's
Christianity. The first one is that religion is an inward affair.
"God," he declares, "hath sent this last Generation a plain, uncouth
Message, bidding man to fight, telling him that he shall have a Heaven,
a Joy, a Paradise, a Land, a Territory, a Kingship--but that _all this
is in himself, the Land to be won is himself_."[8] The second one is
that religion is a progressive movement, an unfolding revelation of
life. "What a height of Presumption is it," he says, "to believe that
the Wisdom and fullness of God can ever be pent up in a Synodical
Canon? How overweening are we to limit the successive manifestations
of God to a present rule and light, persecuting all that comes not
forth in its height and breadth!" It is through this "unnatural
desire" to keep Christians in "a perpetual infancy" that "our dry
nurses" in the Church have "brought us to such a dwarfish stature,"
{213} and he prays that the merciful God may teach at least one nation
a better way than that of "muzzling" the bringer of fresh light.
Much more important, however, for the dissemination of Boehme's ideas
in England was the patient and faithful work of John Sparrow who, in
collaboration with his kinsman, John Ellistone, translated into English
the entire body of Boehme's writings, between the years 1647 and
1661.[9] Sparrow was born at Stambourne in Essex in 1615. He was
admitted to the Inner Court in 1633 and subsequently called to the Bar.
He was probably the author of a widely-read book, published in 1649,
under the title of _Mercurius Teutonicus_, consisting of a series of
"propheticall passages" from Boehme.[10] His outer life was
uneventful; his inner life is revealed in his Introductions to the
Boehme Translations. He begins his long series of Translations with
the testimony that the writings of this author have "so very much
satisfied" his own soul that he wants others to be partakers of the
same source of light, though he warns his readers that their own souls
must come by experience into the condition Boehme himself was in before
they can fully understand him.[11] He is profoundly impressed, {214}
as his great contemporary, Milton, was, with the strange birth of new
sects "now sprung up in England," but he hopes that "goodness will get
the upper hand and that the fruits of the spirit will prevail," and his
mind "is led to think" that through Boehme's message, which has been
very beneficial in other nations, "our troubled, doubting souls in
England may receive much Comfort, leading to that inward Peace which
passeth all understanding, and that all disturbing sects and
heresies . . . will be made to vanish and cease."[12]
Sparrow was deeply impressed with two of Boehme's central ideas, and he
gives expression to them, in his own quaint and peculiar way, in almost
every one of his Introductions--(1) the idea that the visible is a
parable of the Invisible, and (2) the idea that God manifests Himself
within men. In the very first of the Introductions both of these ideas
appear: "This outward world," he says, "is the best outward
looking-glasse to see whatever hath been, is, or shall be in Eternity,
and our own minds are the best inward looking-glasse to see Eternity
exactly in";[13] and he expresses the belief that any one who learns to
read all the work of God in the world without, and in the mind of man
within, will learn to know Him truly, will see Eternity manifested in
time, will discover that the mind of man is a centre of all mysteries,
and that heaven and hell are potentially in us, and he will be
convinced that God is in all things and all things are in God; that we
live in Him and that He lives in us.[14]
This second idea--that God can be found in the depth of man's soul--is
strongly emphasized in Sparrow's next Introduction, written in
1648--"_The Ground of what hath ever been lieth in man_."[15] All that
is in the Scriptures has come out of man's experience and therefore can
now be grasped by us. All that was in Adam lies in the ground and
depth of any man. When the Apostle John wrote that there is an unction
which teacheth all things and leadeth into all truth, he did not
confine this possibility {215} to apostles, but intended to include all
men in the class of those who may be anointed, and all who know "what
is in man" realize that it is possible to attain to this inward and
apostolic guidance.[16] In a passage of great boldness Sparrow goes in
his venturous faith in the inner Spirit as far as the young
Leicestershire preacher did who was starting out, the very year this
Introduction was written, to proclaim the message of the inward Light.
"The ground," he says, "of all that was in Adam is in us; for whatever
Ground lay in God, the same lieth in Christ and through Him it lieth in
us, for He is in us all. And he that knoweth God in himself . . . may
well be able to speak the word of God infallibly as the holy men that
penned the Scriptures. And he that can understand these things in
himself may well know who speaketh by the Spirit of God and who
speaketh his own fancies and delusions."[17]
In the Introduction to the _Mysterium magnum_, Sparrow returns to this
idea of inward illumination, though he balances it better than he did
in the former Introduction, with his estimation of "the antient Holy
Scriptures," and he does not again suggest that present-day men speak
"infallibly." He thinks that the same God who so eminently taught
Moses by His Spirit that he could describe the processes of creation,
must have also prepared the people by the instruction of the same
Spirit, so that they could understand what was written, and so that the
Spirit in one man could verify itself in the experience of many men.
He declares that when the Scriptures instruct and perfect the man of
God, they are effective, "not as a meer relation of things done," but
as the medium of the living Word which reaches the inward Man, the
hidden Man of the heart, the Christ in us, so that we pass beyond "the
history of Christ" and rise to "the experience that Christ is born
within us."[18]
No other book, he says, but the Scriptures, teaches {216} man "with
assured knowledge of all the things which concern the soule, the
eternal part of man," for other writers have written from the
observation of their outward senses, but these writers had "inward
senses--their eyes saw, their ears heard, their hands handled the Word
of Life." And yet for those in these days who can "look through the
vayle or shell within which the Eternal Spirit works its Wonders," the
visible things of the world prove to be "a glasse wherein the
similitude of spirituall things are represented" and "the Minde of man
is a most clear and undeceiving glasse wherein we may perceive the
motions and activities of that Work-Master, the Spirit who hath created
everything in the world."[12] In the most satisfactory of all his
Introductions, the one to the _Aurora_ in 1656, he undertakes to show
that "the Light within" which has now arisen in England is not a
substitute for the Christ of history. On the contrary, he insists that
the Christ within and the Christ of history is one and the same Person
who is not divided. He was once manifested in the likeness of sinful
flesh, suffering, dying, rising, ascending in glory, and now, in an
inward and spiritual manner, He is actually present within men so that
they may become conformable in soul and spirit to Him and share in His
life, sufferings, death, resurrection and glory, or they may, by their
own choice, crucify Him afresh within themselves.[20] The Word of Life
calls loudly within every man, urging the soul to forsake that which it
perceives to be evil and to embrace that which it perceives to be good
and holy and divine. This, he says, is the Eternal Gospel, and it
brings to all men everywhere the good news that we live and move and
have our being in God, and that the soul that gropes in sincerity after
God will find Him, for He is very nigh, even in the heart of the
seeker.[21] He deals in an interesting way with the important
contemporary problem--raised by the prevalence of the emphasis on an
inward Divine Presence--whether human Perfection is possible in this
life. His {217} conclusion is that the tendency to sin remains so long
as "the mortal body" lasts. No person will ever reach a stage of
earthly life in which the spur of the flesh is eradicated, and so no
person can be infallibly certain that he is beyond sin, but when Christ
is inwardly united to the soul and His Spirit dwells in us and reigns
in us and we are risen in soul, spirit, and mind with Him, then we live
no longer after the flesh, or according to its thrust and push, but
share His life and partake of the conquering power of His Spirit; and
thus, though "sown in imperfection we are raised in perfection."[22]
The important matter, however, is not that one call himself a
"Perfectist," but that he actually live "in this earthly pilgrimage and
in this vale of sinfull flesh" in the power of Eternity and by the
Light of Christ, whose fulness may be revealed in himself.[23]
John Ellistone, Sparrow's kinsman and able helper in the work of
bringing Boehme into English thought, holds the same fundamental ideas
as his co-labourer, though he has his own peculiar style and his own
unique way of uttering himself. The stress of his emphasis is always
on first-hand experience--what he calls "an effectual, living,
essential knowledge and real spiritual being of it in one's own
soul";[24] and the brunt of his attack is {218} always against a
religion of "notions"--what he calls "verball, high-flowne, contrived
knowledge and vapouring Notions," constructed from "the mental idolls
of approved masters."[25] Religion, he maintains, can no more consist
of "the letter" or of "a talkative historicall account" than music can
consist of a row of written notes. These things are only signs for the
direction of the skilful musician who must himself _make_ the sounds on
his instrument before there is any music. So, too, if there is to be
any real religion in the world, we Christians must do more than read
and approve "the deciphered writings of illuminated men," we must act
by the same Spirit that inspired those men, we must be "practitioners
of the Divine Light," we must give "living expression to Divine love
and righteousness," we must "practice the way of regeneration in the
Spirit of Christ and _divinitize our knowledge into an effectual
working love and attaine the experimental and essential reality of it
in our owne soules!_"[26] The way out of "the tedious Maze and
wearisome laborinth of discussions and opinions concerning God, Christ,
Faith, Election, the Ordinances and the Way of Worship" is "to know the
Word of Life, Light and Love experimentally," to have "the fire of His
love so enkindled in our own hearts that it may breake forth in our
practice and conversation to the destroying of all Thornes and tearing
Bryars of vaine contentions!"[27]
Like his kinsman, he has endless faith in the possibility of man; he
thinks that the entire Scripture directs us to the Word within us, and
that the Book of all mysteries is within ourselves. "In our owne
Book," he says, "which is the Image of God in us, Time and Eternity and
all Mysteries are couched and contained, and they may be read in our
owne soules by the illumination of the Divine Spirit. Our Minde is a
true mysticall Mirror and Looking-glasse of Divine and Naturall
Mysteries, and we shall receive more real knowledge from one effectuall
innate essentiall beame or ray of Light arising from the New Birth
within us than in reading many {219} hundreds of authors whereby we
frame a Babel of knowledge in the Nation."[28]
He goes so far with his faith in the soul's possibility to return into
"the Original Centre of all Reality" that he declares that a man may
sink deep enough into this Original Principle that binds his own soul
into union with God so that he can penetrate by an inner Light and
experience into the secret qualities and virtues hid in all visible and
corporeal things, and may learn to discover the healing and curative
powers of metals and plants, and may thus, by inward knowledge, advance
all Arts and Sciences.[29]
Ellistone returns to this inner way of arriving at a knowledge of
outward things in his Preface to _Signatura rerum_ in 1651. Man, he
declares, is a microcosm, or abridgment, of the whole universe, he is
the emblem and hieroglyphic of Time and Eternity, and he who will take
pains to push in beyond Solomon's Porch, or the Outer Court of sense
and natural reason, to the Inner Court and Holy Place, where the
immortal Seed abides and where man can become one again with that which
he was in God before he became a creature, then he will have the key
that opens all mysteries both inner and outer. Nature will be an open
Book of Parables in which he can read the truth of Eternity, the world
will be a clear mirror in which he can see the things of the Spirit and
he will know what will cure both soul and body. The "Depth of God
within the Soul," the Inner Light, is the precious Pearl, the
never-failing Comfort, the Panacea for all diseases, the sure Antidote
even against death itself, the unfailing Guide and Way of all
Wisdom.[30]
Here, then, were two very enthusiastic disciples of Boehme who took
their master's teaching very seriously, who on the whole grasped its
essential meaning, were possessed and penetrated by the _idea_ of a
deeper eternal world manifesting itself in the temporal, and who gave
their lives to the difficult task of making Boehme's message {220}
available to their own people and to their own perplexed age. They
were not "occultists." They did not run into enthusiastic vapourings,
nor did they strain after psychic experiences which would relieve them
of the stress and strain of achieving the goal of life through the
formation of balanced character and the practice of social virtues,
though, as we shall see, some of the readers of their translations took
the risky course, and ended in the fog rather than in the clear light.
The question has naturally been raised whether Boehme exercised any
direct influence upon the early Quaker movement.[31] There is at
present no way of proving that George Fox, the chief exponent of the
movement, had actually read the writings of the Teutonic philosopher or
had consciously absorbed the views of the latter, but there are so many
marks of influence apparent in the _Journal_ that no careful student of
both writers can doubt that there was some sort of influence, direct or
indirect, conscious or unconscious. The works of Boehme were, as we
have seen, all available in English, during the great formative period
of Fox's life, from 1647 to 1661. There can be no question that they
were read by the serious _Seekers_ in the period of the Commonwealth.
Thomas Taylor, who was one of the finest fruits of the Seeker movement,
bears in 1659 a positive testimony to the spiritual value of Jacob
Bewman's (Behmen) writings. Taylor received a letter from Justice
William Thornton of Hipswell in Yorkshire, warning him to beware of
"the confused Notions and great words of Jacob Bewman and such like
frothy scriblers." Taylor replies: "For thy light expressions of Jacob
Bewman, I know in most things he speaks a Parable to thee yet, and so
his writings may well be lightly esteemed of by thee; but there is that
in his Writings which, if ever thy eye be opened, will appear to be a
sweet unfolding of the Mystery of God and of Christ, in divers
particulars, according to his Gift. And therefore beware of speaking
Evil of that which thou {221} know'st not."[32] We have also seen how
Boehme appealed to such noble Seekers as Charles and Durant Hotham,
John Sparrow, and John Ellistone.[33] One Quaker of some importance,
Francis Ellington, not only read the writings of Boehme, but regarded
"that Faithful Servant Jacob Behme" as "a Prophet of the Lord."[34] He
quotes from his German "Prophet" the words: "A Lilly blossometh to you
ye Northern Countries; if you destroy it not with sectarian contention
of the learned, then it will become a great Tree among you, but if you
shall rather contend than to know the true God, then the Ray passeth by
and hitteth only some; and then afterwards you shall be forced to draw
water for the thirst of your souls among strange nations." Ellington
regards Boehme as a genuine "prophet," and the "Lilly" that was to
blossom in the North seems to Ellington plainly to be George Fox and
his Quaker Society, which the learned have tried in vain to overthrow.
He cites many passages from the Teutonic Prophet of the Lord to show
the parallelism between the prophesied type of spiritual religion and
the Children of the Light who have exactly fulfilled it.[35]
It would be natural to expect that the young Quaker seeker, eager for
any light on his dark path, would read the _Forty Questions_ and _The
Three Principles of the Divine Essence_, or at least that he would hear
them discussed by the people among whom he moved in these intense and
eventful years. In any case there are ideas expressed and experiences
described in the _Journal_ which look strangely like memories,
conscious or subconscious, of ideas and experiences to be found in the
Boehme writings. The most striking single passage is one which
describes an experience which occurred to Fox in 1648. It is as
follows: "Now was I come up in Spirit through the flaming sword into
the paradise of God. All things were {222} new; and all the Creation
gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I
knew nothing but pureness and innocency and righteousness, being
renewed into the image of God by Jesus Christ, to the state of Adam
before he fell. The creation was opened to me; and it was showed me
how all things had their names given them, according to their nature
and virtue. I was at a stand in my mind, whether I should practise
physic for the good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtue of things
were so opened to me by the Lord. . . . The admirable works of
creation and the virtues thereof may be known through the openings of
that divine Word of Wisdom and power by which they were made."[36]
Jacob Boehme had, as we have seen, a similar experience of having "the
nature and virtues of things opened" to him in the year 1600. The
following account of it was given in Sparrow's Introduction to _Forty
Questions_, printed in 1647: "He went forth into the fields and there
perceived the wonderful or wonder works of the Creator in the
signatures, shapes, figures, and qualities or properties of all created
things very clearly and plainly laid open. Whereupon he was filled
with exceeding joy." The same incident is told in a slightly different
way in Justice Hotham's _Life of Behmen_: "Going abroad into the
Fields, to a Green before Neys-Gate, at Gorlitts, he there sate down,
and viewing the Herbs and Grass of the Field, in his Inward Light he
saw into their essences, use and properties." It was, further, a
fundamental idea of Boehme's that the outward and visible world is a
parable and symbol of the spiritual world within, and that by a
spiritual experience which carries the soul down to the inner, hidden,
abysmal Centre, the secrets and mysteries of the outward creation may
become revealed. Hotham says that Boehme, by his divine Light, "beheld
the whole of creation, and from that Fountain of Revelation wrote his
book _De signatura rerum_."[37] Ellistone, in the Introduction to
Boehme's _Epistles_, printed in 1649, predicts {223} that an
experience, like this one which Fox claimed, will come to those who
receive the inner Divine Light. "This knowledge," he says, "must
advance all Arts and Sciences and conduce to the attainment of the
Universal Tincture and Signature, whereby the different secret
qualities and vertues that are hid in all visible and corporeall
things, as Metals, Minerals, Plants and Herbes, may be drawne forth and
applied to their right naturall use _for the curing and healing_ of
corrupt and decayed nature."[38]
It was also a feature of Boehme's teaching that man must enter again
into Paradise and return to the condition of the unfallen Adam. "The
Noble Virgin" [_i.e._ Sophia or Spiritual Wisdom], Boehme writes,
"showeth us the Gate and how we must enter again into Paradise through
the sharpness of the sword," which, in a few lines previous, he calls
"the flaming sword which God set to keep the Tree of Life."[39] Fox's
experience of the "new smell" of creation is an even more striking
parallel. Mystic awakenings and spiritual openings generally impress
the recipient of them with a sense of new and fresh penetration into
the meaning of things and leave them with a feeling of heightened
powers, but cases in which the experience results in a new sense of
_smell_ are fairly rare. Two persons might, no doubt, have such an
experience quite independently, but one who has become familiar with
the range of _suggestion_ in experiences of this type will note with
interest the large place which "new Smells and Odours" occupy in
Boehme's writings. For example, he says, in the _Signatura rerum_,
where he describes the coming of the Paradise-experience: "When
Paradise springs up, the paradisaical joy puts itself forth with a
lovely smell,"[40] and in one of his Epistles he speaks of a spiritual
awakening in his own life that was marked by a new smell--"A very
strong Odour was given to me in the life of God."[41]
There is another passage in Fox's _Journal_, a few lines {224} beyond
this famous account of his Paradise-experience, that also bears the
mark of Boehme's influence. In fact, it is difficult to believe that
Fox could have got his phraseology anywhere else than from Boehme. The
passage reads: "As people come into subjection to the Spirit of God and
grow up in the Image and Power of the Almighty, they may receive the
_Word of Wisdom that opens all things, and, come to know the hidden
Unity in the Eternal Being_."[42] Everywhere in Boehme it is "Sophia,
the Word of Wisdom," that "opens all things," and the goal of all
spiritual experience and of all divine illumination for him consists in
coming to "the hidden Unity in the Eternal Being, or the Eternal
Essence." That is not a Biblical phrase, and it is not one which the
Drayton youth would have heard from native English sources. It came to
England with the Boehme literature. Further revelations along this
same line of "opening" follow in the _Journal_. In the Vale of Beavor
the Lord "opened" things to Fox, relating to "the three great
professions in the world, physic, divinity and law." "He showed me,"
Fox says, "that the physicians were out of the Wisdom of God by which
the creatures were made, and so knew not their virtue because they were
_out of the Word of Wisdom_." He saw that the priests were actuated by
_the dark power_--a very suspicious phrase to one who knows what a
place the "Dark Principle" holds in Boehme's writings--and he saw that
the lawyers were out of the Wisdom of God. But it was opened to him
that all these three professions might be "reformed" and "brought into
the Wisdom of God by which all things were created," and "have a right
understanding of the virtues of things through the Word of Wisdom"; for
"in the Light all things may be seen both visible and invisible."[43]
The extraordinary use of Old Testament figures, by which Fox
illustrates the condition of the Church, in the section of the
_Journal_ following the passages above quoted, is no less significant.
The figures of Cain and Esau, of Korah and Balaam, and the types of
Adam and Moses are given {225} quite in the style of _The Three
Principles_, or of the _Mysterium magnum_.[44] One parallel is
especially interesting. Fox says: "I saw plainly that none could read
Moses aright without Moses' spirit, by which Moses saw how man was in
the Image of God in Paradise, and how he fell and how death came over
him, and how all men have been under this death."[45] The Preface to
_Mysterium magnum_ says: "I cannot but think that the same God that
taught Moses so eminently by His Spirit had so fitted the people for
whom he wrote that they were capable to receive instruction by his
words."[46] This idea, so frequently expressed in the writings of Fox,
that no one can understand the Scriptures except by the Spirit that
gave forth the Scriptures,[47] is equally a fundamental idea of Boehme
and his English interpreters. In many passages of the _Mysterium
magnum_ Boehme declares that the written word is only a witness to the
living Word, which latter Word can be understood only by those who are
in the Spirit that spoke in the Prophets and Apostles.[48] Sparrow, in
his Introduction to the _Aurora_, declares that no person can
understand the spiritual mystery of redemption, "though he reade of it
in the Scriptures," unless the Holy Spirit in himself, the true Divine
Light, enlighten him, and give him the word of faith in his heart;
"neither," he adds, "can any understand the Holy Scriptures but by the
same Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Soul."[49]
On one occasion the Lord showed Fox the nature of things that are in
the human heart--"as the nature of dogs, swine, vipers, etc."[50] So,
too, Boehme saw that there are many kinds of wild beast in man's
nature--the lion, the wolf, the dog, the fox, and the serpent.[51] Fox
frequently speaks of the two "seeds"--the Seed of God or the Seed of
Christ and the seed of the serpent--and the victory of life in the
Spirit consists in having the Seed of God conquer the seed of the
serpent, or, as Fox {226} often expresses it, having "the Seed of God
bruise the serpent's head," or having "the Seed of God atop of the
devil and all his works"; or having "the Seed reign."[52] This
phraseology runs throughout Boehme's writings. The two "seeds" are
everywhere in evidence, and "the Treader on the serpent" is the
frequent name for Christ and for the victorious soul. God showed Adam,
Boehme says, how "the Treader on the serpent" should once again be
brought with virtue and power up into the Paradise of God, and live
anew by the Word of God.[53]
Fox, in the account of his first great transforming opening in 1647,
says: "I knew God by revelation as one who hath the key doth open."[54]
This is a frequent figure in Boehme for a first-hand experience.
"Where is Paradise to be found?" he asks. "Is it far away or is it
near? One person cannot lend the key to another. Every one must
unlock it with his own key or else he cannot enter,"[55] and again he
describes that "surpassing joy of the new regeneration," when the soul
"gets the keys of the kingdom of heaven and may open for itself."[56]
Fox's "openings" about university-trained ministers and his references
to "stone churches," or "churches of stone and mortar," have many
parallels in Boehme. Dinah of the Old Testament, for example, is
"nothing else but a figure of our stone churches and our colleges with
their ministers!" and Jacob's concubine, again, "signifieth nothing
else but the stone churches in which God's word and testament are
handled."[57]
Finally, Fox's great vision of an ocean of Darkness and an ocean of
Light, while no doubt a real experience and expressed in his own words,
is profoundly like Boehme's fundamental insight that there are two
world-principles of Light and Darkness, and that Light is, in the end,
victorious over Darkness.[58]
No attempt has been made to gather an exhaustive set {227} of parallels
between the experiences and ideas of these two religious teachers.
Enough, however, is presented to show that this spiritual leader in
England was distinctly a debtor to the Teutonic seer who died the same
year in which the former was born. Fox himself never mentions Boehme
by name, nor does he ever refer to the little sect of "Behmenists,"
which, springing into existence contemporaneously with the birth of the
Quaker movement, had an interesting, though short-lived, history; but a
number of the followers of Fox went aggressively into the lists against
their puny rival.
The so-called "sect of Behmenists" is thus described by Richard Baxter:
"The fifth sect are the Behmenists whose opinions go much toward the
way of the former [the Quakers] for the sufficiency of the Light of
Nature, Inward Light, the salvation of the Heathen as well as
Christians, and a dependence on 'revelations.' But they are fewer in
number, and seem to have attained to greater Meekness and conquest of
passions than any of the rest. Their doctrines are to be seen in Jacob
Behmen's Books, by him that hath nothing else to do, than to bestow a
great deal of time to understand him that was not willing to be easily
understood!"[59]
"The chiefest" of this "sect of Behmenists," Baxter says, was Dr. John
Pordage. Pordage was born in 1607; was curate in 1644 of St.
Lawrence's in Reading; was made rector of the Church in Bradfield late
in 1646; was charged in 1651 with heresies, comprised in nine articles,
consisting apparently of a sort of mystical pantheism. He was at first
acquitted, but was later charged again with heresies on these nine
counts, with fifty-six more, and was deprived of his rectory in 1655.
He valiantly defended himself in a book with the title, _Truth
appearing through the Clouds of Undeserved Scandel_, and in other
publications, and after the Restoration he was reinstated. As the
Behmenists were definitely attacked by the Quaker, John Anderdon, in
1661, it is to be inferred that they existed as a society at least as
early as the {228} Restoration, though the movement became much more
prominent in the 'seventies, when Pordage discovered a remarkable woman
named Jane Leade, and they "agreed to wait together in prayer and pure
dedication." Jane Leade, whose maiden name was Jane Ward, was born of
a good English family in 1623. She was a psychopathic child, and as a
young girl "heard miraculous voices" which led her to devote herself to
religion. She became profoundly impressed with the writings of Boehme,
as Pordage had been still earlier, and under the _suggestion_ of
Boehme's experiences she received many "prophetic visions," which are
recorded in her spiritual Diary, _A Fountain of Gardens_.[60] A few
instances of her experiences in the early stages will be of some value
to the reader. She was visiting, she says, in April 1670, in a quiet,
retired place, and was "contemplating the happy state of the angelical
world, much exercised upon Solomon's choice, which was to find out the
Noble Stone of Wisdom." "There came upon me an overshadowing bright
cloud, and in the midst of it the Figure of a woman, most richly
adorned with transparent gold, her hair hanging down, and her face as
terrible as chrystal for brightness, but her countenance was sweet and
mild. At which sight I was somewhat amazed, and immediately this Voice
came, saying, Behold, I am God's Eternal Virgin, Wisdom, whom thou hast
been enquiring after. I am to unseal the Treasures of God's deep
Wisdom unto thee. . . . Wisdom shall be born in the inward parts of
thy soul." Three days later, "the same Figure in greater Glory did
appear, with a crown upon her head, full of majesty, saying, Behold me
as thy Mother and know thou art to enter into covenant, to obey the
New-Creation laws that shall be revealed unto thee."[61] In her
account of the following extraordinary experience there are many marks
of Boehme's influence: "I retained no strength, my Sun of Reason and
the Moon of my outward sense were folded up and withdrew. I knew
nothing by myself, as {229} to those working properties from Nature and
Creature, and the wheel of the Motion standing still, another
[influence] moved from a central Fire, so that I felt myself transmuted
into one pure flame. Then came that Word to me, 'This is no other than
the Gate to my Eternal Deep.'"[62]
Pordage's main contribution to the exposition of "Behmenism" was a book
published in 1683 and entitled, _Theologia Mystica, or the Mystic
Divinitie of the Eternal Invisibles_. It is the work of a confused
mind, and its spiritual penetration, as also its mastery of the English
language, are of a low order. The marks of Boehme's influence appear
everywhere in the book, though Pordage is quite incapable of
comprehending the more profound and robust features of Boehme's
philosophy. What he relates professes to be what he himself has _seen_
in visions, or what he has heard from celestial visitants. It has, he
says, been his privilege to taste much of that Tree of Life which grows
in the midst of the Paradise of God; to smell the difference between
heaven and hell; to have seen through the veil of nature into the
spiritual glory of eternity, to have felt "the distillations of
heavenly dew and secret touches of the Holy Ghost." Unlike his
Teutonic master, he taught (and it was also the view of Jane Leade)
that in the end Divine Love transmutes evil into good and even hell
into Paradise. One passage in his book, written in his best style,
will be sufficient to illustrate his glowing optimism: "Love is of a
transmuting and transforming Nature. The great effect of Love is to
turn all things into its own Nature, which is all goodness, sweetness,
and perfection. This is that Divine Power which turns Water into Wine,
Sorrow and Hellish Anguish into exulting and triumphing Joy; Curse into
Blessing; where it meets with a barren heathy Desart it transmutes it
into a Paradise of delights; yea, it changeth evil to good and all
imperfection into perfection. It restores that which is fallen and
degenerated to its primary Beauty, Excellence and Perfection. It is
{230} the Divine Stone, the White Stone with a Name written on it,
which none knows but him that hath it . . . the Divine Elixir whose
transforming power and efficacy nothing can withstand."[63]
His greater disciple, Jane Leade, "the enamoured woman-devotee of
Pordage," the main exponent of the Behmenist movement of this period,
was a far too voluminous writer.[64] She was a sincere, pure-minded
woman, of intense devotion, but she was a strongly emotional type of
person, and lived in a kind of permanent borderland of visions and
revelations. Her language, like that also of Pordage, is
ungrammatical, of involved style, and full of overwrought and fanciful
imagination. Christopher Walton, who in many ways respected her, calls
her writings "a huge mass of parabolicalism and idiocratic
deformity!"[64] In her _Message to the Philadelphian Society_ she
reports a curious vision from heaven which assures her that the Quakers
are not God's chosen people. There pass in review before her
illuminated sight the various claimants to the lofty title of the true
Church, the real Bride of Christ. There are Anabaptists, Fifth
Monarchy Men, and many others. "Then," she says, "did I see a body
greater than any of these come up with great boldness, as deeming
themselves to have arrived to Perfection and so visibly distinguishing
themselves from all the rest, and I said, Now surely the anointed of
the Lord is before Him. But a Voice said, Neither are these they; for
the Lord seeth not as man seeth."[66]
A third and intellectually far greater member of this group of
"Behmenists" was Francis Lee, a Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, a
student in Leyden University, and a man of splendid parts. He became
acquainted with the movement while in Holland, and on his return home
sought out Jane Leade, became her adopted son, and, later, on the
strength of a "revelation" made to his {231} spiritual mother, he
married her daughter. Until the time of Jane Leade's death in 1704, he
was her devoted disciple, writing for her in the period of her
blindness, and editing and publishing many of her books. He was the
moving spirit in the formation of "the Philadelphian Society" for the
propagation of the mystical ideas of the followers of Boehme--a Society
which existed from 1697 to 1703, and which had a far-reaching influence
not only in England but still more on the Continent of Europe.[67]
John Anderdon, an interesting Quaker pamphleteer, born in 1624,
convinced of the Truth of the Quaker Message by the preaching of
Francis Howgil in 1658, and for many years a prisoner for his faith,
for which he finally died in prison, furnishes in his attack on the
"Behmenists" in 1661 the earliest data available for an estimate of
their views and practices.[68] The writer has evidently read the works
of Jacob Boehme, or at least some of them, and he contends that the
"Behmenists" whom he is attacking have failed to understand the
writings of their master and have never fathomed "the tendencie of his
spirit": "The Conclusion which you have drawn to yourselves from his
Writings will not profit you; neither doth it make you any jot the more
excellent, that ye can talk much of him and his Books and Writings,
being not come to the right Spirit in which is life, which brings men
out of dead Forms."[69]
His main criticism of the little sect is that its members make use of
"Mediums and borrowed Instruments for the conveyance of God's Grace and
Virtue into the Soul,"[70] and that they have "not come to the Light
which gives {232} a true understanding of the things of God," though he
admits that there "was sometime" in them "a hungering and thirsting
after Righteousness."[71] These "Mediums" are evidently the Water of
Baptism and the Bread and Wine of the Supper--"Ordinances," he says,
"as you call them."[72] It would seem from this Quaker Pamphlet that
the "Behmenists" under review were much like the followers of Fox,
except only that they continued to use the sacraments. This use of
"Mediums" seemed to him indicate that they were "out of the Light" and
"trying to _cover_ the serpent's head," instead of stamping on it, but
Anderdon would not have written his _Blow at Babel_ if he had not been
impressed with the general marks of likeness in other respects between
the "Behmenists" and his own people.
Another interesting Quaker document furnishes a glimpse of the
"Behmenists" a dozen years later--at about the period when John Pordage
and Jane Leade were beginning to "wait together in prayer and pure
meditation." It is a Minute adopted by the London "Morning Meeting" of
Friends, "the 21st of ye 7th Month 1674." The occasion for action was
the reception of "an Epistle to the Behminists," written by Ralph
Frettwell of Barbadoes, at an earlier period "one of the Chief Judges
of the Court of Common-pleas" in the island. He had been stirred to
write for the same reason that impelled Anderdon, and his "Epistle"
called these partly spiritualized people, as he believed, to the fuller
Light, and warned them against the use of Baptism, and Bread and Wine,
and "the Pater Noster." The Minute of the Morning Meeting, which opens
with the words: "Deare freind R. F. in the Truth that never changeth
but changeth all who believe and obey it," records the decision of the
Meeting not to publish the Epistle, "wee haveing well weighed it in the
feare of God and in tender Care of Truth." The reason given in the
Minutes for not publishing the "Epistle" is, first, that "the writings
of J. B. reveal {233} a great mixture of light and darkness," and
indicate that he lived sometimes in the power of one and sometimes in
the power of the other, that God Himself has tried and judged the
Spirit of darkness, and that the Spirit of Light has already "come to
its own Centre and flows forth again purely"--presumably in the Quaker
movement.[73] As the Lord Himself has given judgment and has given
victory to the Principle of the Light, the publication of the "Epistle"
is unnecessary.
And, secondly, Frettwell, in calling the "Behmenists" from "the use of
Mediums," admits that at an earlier period of his life, before he
received the full Light, he "received light and peace" through these
external things. This seemed to the Meeting "too much giveing them
encouragement" to dwell in things which give "only drynesse and
barrenness," and they fear that "the ffoxes among them would take
advantage" of this aid and comfort.[74] It would appear that the
gravamen of the Quaker attack on the little sect was the failure of its
members to dispense with sacraments. At a later period, when the
"Philadelphian Society" was in full flower, an old-time pillar Quaker,
George Keith, then become a Churchman and "an apostate" in the eyes of
Friends, attacked the writings of Jane Leade on the ground that "she
wrote derogatory to the Humanity of Christ," _i.e._ the historical
Christ. Francis Lee took up vigorously the defence, and told George
Keith that he himself had taught again and again the same principle of
inward Light and inward Religion, that he had never yet publicly
renounced these early ideas of his, and that he of all men ought to
understand the meaning of a Christ within and of a "Still Eternity."[75]
Traces of Boehme's influence appear in the terms and {234} ideas of
many English writers during the period under consideration, besides
those specifically mentioned. Sir Isaac Newton read Boehme's books
with great appreciation and meditated upon those strange accounts of
the invisible universe which underlies and is in the visible world, but
we need not take too seriously the claim of the "Behmenists" that "he
was ploughing with Behmen's heifer" when he discovered the law of
universal gravitation![76] Milton, without any doubt, had read the
German mystic's account of the eternal war between the Light Principle
and the Dark Principle, of the fall of Lucifer, of the loss of
Paradise, and of the return of man in Christ to Paradise, and there are
many passages in the great poet which look decidedly like germinations
from the seed which Boehme sowed, but we must observe caution in
tracing the origin of verses written by a poet of Milton's genius and
originality and range of knowledge. One great Englishman of a later
period, William Law, unmistakably owed to Jacob Boehme the main
influences which transformed his life, and through the pure and lucid
style of this noble English mystic of the eighteenth century, Boehme's
insights found a new interpretation and a clearer expression than he
himself or any other interpreter had been able to give them.[77]
[1] "The Life of one Jacob Boehmen, who although he was a meane man,
yet wrote the most wonderful deepe knowledge in Naturall and Divine
Things, that any hath been known to doe since the Apostles' Times, and
yet never read them or learned them from any other man, as may be scene
in that which followeth."--London, 1644, printed by L. N. for Richard
Whitaker.
[2] _Journal of George Fox_ (Cambridge edition, 1911), i. p. 18.
[3] Preface, A. 4.
[4] _Ibid._
[5] _Journ._ i. p. 29.
[6] _The Life of Jacob Behmen_, written by Durant Hotham, Esquire,
November 7, 1653. Printed for H. Blunden, and sold at the Castle in
Corn Hill, 1654.
[7] _Life of Jacob Behmen_, B. 2.
[8] _Op. cit._ B. 2.
[9] The writings were translated in the following order: In 1647,
_Forty Questions_ by Sparrow; _The Clavis_, by Sparrow. In 1648, _The
Three Principles_, by Sparrow; _The Way to Christ_ (including the
Treatises, _On True Repentance_; _On True Resignation_; _On
Regeneration_; _The Supersensual Life_; and _On Illumination_), by
Sparrow. In 1649, _Of the Last Times_, by Sparrow; _Epistles of Jacob
Behmen_, by Ellistone. In 1650, _The Three-fold Life_, by Sparrow. In
1651, _De signatura rerum_, by Ellistone. In 1652, _Christ's
Testaments_--Baptism and Supper,--by Sparrow. In 1654, _The Mysterium
magnum_, by Ellistone and Sparrow; _A Table of the Divine
Manifestation_, by H. Blunden and Sparrow; _A Table of the Three
Principles_, H. Blunden and Sparrow; _An Epitome of the Three
Principles_, by Sparrow. In 1655, _On Predestination_, by Sparrow; _A
Short Compendium on Repentance_, by Sparrow. In 1656, _The Aurora_, by
Sparrow. In 1659, _The Treatise on the Incarnation_, by Sparrow. In
1661, _The Great Six Points_; _The Earthly and Heavenly Mystery_; _The
Four Complexions_; _Two Apologies to Tylcken_; _Considerations
concerning Stiefel's Threefold State of Man_; _An Apology concerning
Perfection_; _On Divine Contemplation_; _An Apology for the Books on
True Repentance and True Resignation_; _177 Theosophic Questions_; _The
Holy Week_; _25 Epistles_, by Sparrow.
[10] Sparrow refers to this book in his Introduction to _The Three
Principles_ as follows: "For a taste of the Spirit of prophecy which
the author [Boehme] had, there is a little treatise of some prophecies
concerning these latter times, collected out of his writings by a lover
of the Teutonic philosophy and entitled Mercurius Teutonicus."
[11] Introd. to _Forty Questions_.
[12] Introd. to _Forty Questions_.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Introd. to _The Three Princ._
[16] Introd. to _The Three Princ._
[17] Ibid.
[18] "To the Reader" in _Myst. mag._
[19] "To the Reader" in _Myst. mag._
[20] Preface to the Reader in _Aurora_.
[21] Preface for the _Aurora_.
[22] Preface for the _Aurora_.
[23] A contemporary of Sparrow, probably Samuel Pordage, wrote an
Encomium on Sparrow in the Introduction to a long Behmenite Poem called
_Mundorum explicatio_ (London, 1661). The passage is as follows:
"And learned Sparrow we thy praises too
Will Sing; rewards too small for what is due,
The Gifts of Glory and of Praise we owe:
The English Behmen doth Thy Trophies show.
Whilst Englishmen that great saint's praise declare,
Thy Name shall join'd with his receive a share.
The Time shall come when his great Name shall rise,
Thy Glory also shall ascend the skies.
Thou mad'st him English speak, or else what Good
Had his works done us if not understood?
To Germany they beneficial prove
Alone: till we enjoyed them by thy Love.
Their German Robes thou took'st from them, that we
Their Beauties might in English Garments see.
Thus has thy Love a vast rich Treasure showen,
And made what was exotic now our own."
[24] Preface to Boehme's _Epistles_ (1649).
[25] Preface to Boehme's _Epistles_.
[26] _Ibid._
[27] _Ibid._
[28] Preface to _Epistles_.
[29] _Ibid._
[30] Preface to _Sig. re._
[31] This question was raised by Barclay in his _Inner Life of the
Religious Societies of the Commonwealth_ (London, 1879), pp. 214-215.
[32] Thomas Taylor's _Works_ (London, 1697), p. 86.
[33] The writings themselves constantly use the word "Seeker," and the
Introductions emphasize the Seeking attitude.
[34] _Christian Information Concerning these Last Times_, by F. E.
(London, 1664), pp. 10-11.
[35] _Op. cit._ pp. 11-12.
[36] _Journal_ (ed. 1901), 28. Unfortunately the Cambridge Journal
does not contain any biographical incidents prior to 1652.
[37] Hotham's _Life_, D. 4.
[38] Preface to _Epistles_, p. 10.
[39] The _Three Princ._, trans. 1648, xx. 40-41.
[40] _Sig. re._ viii. 23.
[41] _Ep._ xv. 18. For another passage on "the new smell," see _The
Three Princ._ iv. 27.
[42] _Journal_, i. p. 29.
[43] _Ibid._ i. pp. 29-30.
[44] See _Journal_, i. pp. 31-34.
[45] _Ibid._ i. p. 33.
[46] _Op. cit._ A.
[47] See, for specimen passages, _Journal_, i. pp. 36 and 124.
[48] See especially _Myst. mag._ xxxviii. sections 52-59.
[49] Preface to _Aurora_, B.
[50] _Journal_, i. p. 19.
[51] _Three Princ._ xvi. 31-37.
[52] See _Journal_, i. p. 13; pp. 190-191 and _passim_.
[53] _Three Princ._ iv. 5. See also _ibid._ xv. 24; xvi. 42; and
xviii. 24.
[54] _Journal_, i. p. 12.
[55] _Three Princ._ ix. 25-26.
[56] _Ibid._ xix. 33.
[57] _Myst. mag._ lxii. 17 and lxiii. 36.
[58] See Fox's _Journal_, i. p. 19.
[59] _Reliquiae Baxterianae_ (London, 1715), i. 77.
[60] _A Fountain of Gardens_, 4 vols., London, 1696-1701.
[61] _Op. cit._ i. pp. 17-19.
[62] _A Fountain of Gardens_, p. 25.
[63] _Theologia mystica_, p. 81.
[64] Christopher Walton, in his _Notes and Materials_ (1854), gives a
list of eighteen of her books.
[65] _Ibid._ p. 238.
[66] _Op. cit._ p. 9. Pordage disliked the Quakers and speaks
slightingly of them in _Theologia mystica_. He also wrote a Treatise
against them. See Walton, p. 203.
[67] Important material on this subject may be found in Walton's _Notes
and Materials_, especially pp. 188-258.
[68] The full title-page of Anderdon's book is as follows: _One Blow at
Babel_. In those of the Pepole called Behemnites, whose Foundation is
not upon that of the Prophets and Apostles, which shall stand sure and
firm forever; but upon their own carnal conceptions, begotten in their
Imaginations upon Jacob Behmen's writings: They not knowing the better
part, the Teachings of that Spirit that sometime opened some Mysteries
of God's Kingdom in Jacob, have chosen the worser part in Esau,
according to the predominancy of that Spirit which ruled in them when
they made choice of their Religion, as it doth in others the hearts of
the children of disobedience.--By John Anderdon. (London, printed in
the year 1662, written in 1661).
[69] _One Blow at Babel_, p. 3.
[70] _Ibid._ pp. 1 and 6.
[71] _One Blow at Babel_, pp. 1-2.
[72] Jane Leade's writings give great importance to the outward
sacraments.
[73] The use of the phrase "its own Centre," which became an important
Quaker term, is an interesting relic of Boehme's influence.
[74] _Minutes of the Morning Meeting_, i. George Fox apparently asked
to see Frattwell's MS., for in a Letter under date of eighth mo. 1st,
1674, Alexander Parker writes to George Fox: "I likewise spoke to Edw.
Man [Edward Mann] to send down Ralph ffrettwells Book, I suppose he
intends to see thee shortly and if he can find ye Book to bring itt
with him."--_Journal_ (Cambridge edition), ii. p. 305.
[75] Walton's _Notes and Materials_, pp. 227 and 231.
[76] See Walton's _Notes and Materials_, pp. 3, 46, 72, and 404.
[77] William Law lies beyond the period to which this volume is
devoted. It is customary to call the edition of Behmen's _Works_,
published 1764-1781, "William Law's Edition." This is quite incorrect.
This edition is in the main a reprint of the earlier Translations by
Sparrow and Ellistone. It was edited by George Ward, assisted by
Thomas Langcake, and printed at the expense of Mrs. Hutcheson, an
intimate friend of William Law.
{235}