Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries Part 22

Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries Part 22

[45] _Myst. mag._ lxii. 25.

[46] _The Three Principles_, xix. 47; xxi. 32.; _Sig. re._ viii. 27.

[47] _Forty Questions_, xii. 39.

[48] For an example of it, see _Myst. mag._ lxxiv. 46.

[49] _Forty Questions_, x. 9.

[50] _Fourth Epistle_, 32, and _True Repentance_.

[51] _Regeneration_, 161-162.

[52] _Myst. mag._ lxiii. 47. This theme constantly reappears.

[53] _Sig. re._ xv. 37.

[54] _Resignation_, vi. 134-151.

[55] _Forty Questions_, xiv. 17-19.

[56] _Op. cit._ iv. 16.

[57] Von Hartmann's _Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme_, p. 50.

[58] _Twenty-fifth Epistle_, 2.

[59] _Aurora_, xix. 95.

[60] _Twenty-sixth Epistle_, 7.

[61] _Aurora_, xviii. 9.

[62] _Sig. re._ xvi. 38.

[63] _Ibid._ ix. 65.

[64] _Ibid._ xiii. 27 and xv. 9.

[65] _The Supersensual Life_, 29 and 30.

[66] _Ibid._ 27.

{208}

CHAPTER XII

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 t.i.tle: _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 G.o.d, 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 t.i.tle: _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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.es 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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d's workeinge in his hearte: & after yt I had some discourse with him off ye things of G.o.d 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 n.o.ble descent from eternal essences" and "our n.o.bel 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 a.s.sume a G.o.d remote in time and s.p.a.ce, a G.o.d who once created a world and left it to go to ruin. He reminds his readers that the G.o.d 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 G.o.d near at hand, nor is it surprising that Hotham said to the young prophet of the inward Guide: "If G.o.d 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 n.o.bler 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 G.o.dhead," in "the great deep of the perpetually eternal G.o.d." 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 G.o.d." In man, who thus epitomizes all the spheres and principles of the universe, "G.o.d, as in a gla.s.se, 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 G.o.d," 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 G.o.d 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.

"G.o.d," 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 G.o.d can ever be pent up in a Synodical Canon? How overweening are we to limit the successive manifestations of G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 Ess.e.x 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 t.i.tle of _Mercurius Teutonicus_, consisting of a series of "propheticall pa.s.sages" 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 pa.s.seth 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 G.o.d 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-gla.s.se to see whatever hath been, is, or shall be in Eternity, and our own minds are the best inward looking-gla.s.se to see Eternity exactly in";[13] and he expresses the belief that any one who learns to read all the work of G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l are potentially in us, and he will be convinced that G.o.d is in all things and all things are in G.o.d; that we live in Him and that He lives in us.[14]

This second idea--that G.o.d 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 G.o.d, the same lieth in Christ and through Him it lieth in us, for He is in us all. And he that knoweth G.o.d in himself . . . may well be able to speak the word of G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sured 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 sh.e.l.l within which the Eternal Spirit works its Wonders," the visible things of the world prove to be "a gla.s.se wherein the similitude of spirituall things are represented" and "the Minde of man is a most clear and undeceiving gla.s.se 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 subst.i.tute 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 G.o.d, and that the soul that gropes in sincerity after G.o.d 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 "pract.i.tioners 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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-gla.s.se 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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]