Jacob Behmen | Page 5

we read Behmen's earlier work especially, we

continually exclaim, O for a chapter of John Bunyan's clear, and sweet,
and classical English! The Aurora was written in a language, if writing
and a language it can be called, that had never been seen written or
heard spoken before, or has since, on the face of the earth. And as our
students learn Greek in order to read Homer and Plato and Paul and
John, and Latin in order to read Virgil and Tacitus, and Italian to read
Dante, and German to read Goethe, so William Law tells us that he
learned Behmen's Behmenite High Dutch, and that too after he was an
old man, in order that he might completely master the Aurora and its
kindred books. And as our schoolboys laugh and jeer at the outlandish
sounds of Greek and Latin and German, till they have learned to read
and love the great authors who have written in those languages, so
WESLEY, and SOUTHEY, and even HALLAM himself, jest and flout
and call names at Jacob Behmen, because they have not taken the
trouble to learn his language, to master his mind, and to drink in his
spirit. At the same time, and after all that has been said about Behmen's
barbarous style, Bishop Martensen tells us how the readers of
SCHELLING were surprised and enraptured by a wealth of new
expressions and new turns of speech in their mother tongue. But all
these belonged to Behmen, or were fashioned on the model of his
symbolical language. As it is, with all his astrology, and all his alchemy,
and all his barbarities of form and expression, I for one will always take
sides with the author of The Serious Call, and The Spirit of Prayer, and
The Spirit of Love, and The Way to Divine Knowledge, in the disputed
matter of Jacob Behmen's sanity and sanctity; and I will continue to
believe that if I had only had the scholarship, and the intellect, and the
patience, and the enterprise, to have mastered, through all their
intricacies, the Behmenite grammar and the Behmenite vocabulary, I
also would have found in Behmen all that Freher and Pordage and Law
and Walton found. Even in the short way into this great man that I have
gone, I have come upon such rare and rich mines of divine and eternal
truth that I can easily believe that they who have dug deeper have come
upon uncounted riches. 'Next to the Scriptures,' writes William Law,
'my only book is the illuminated Behmen. For the whole kingdom of
grace and nature was opened in him. In reading Behmen I am always at
home, and kept close to the kingdom of GOD that is within me.' 'I am
not young,' said CLAUDE DE ST. MARTIN, 'being now near my

fiftieth year, nevertheless I have begun to learn German, in order that I
may read this incomparable author in his own tongue. I have written
some not unacceptable books myself, but I am not worthy to unloose
the shoestrings of this wonderful man. I advise you to throw yourself
into the depths of Jacob Behmen. There is such a profundity and
exaltation of truth in them, and such a simple and delicious nutriment.'
The Town Council of Goerlitz, hounded on by their Minister, sentenced
Behmen to be banished, and interdicted him from ever writing any
more. But in sheer shame at what they had done they immediately
recalled Behmen from banishment; only, they insisted that he should
confine himself to his shop, and leave all writing of books alone.
Behmen had no ambition to write any more, and, as a matter of fact, he
kept silence even to himself for seven whole years. But as those years
went on it came to be with him, to use his own words, as with so much
grain that has been buried in the earth, and which, in spite of storms
and tempests, will, out of its own life, spring up, and that even when
reason says it is now winter, and that all hope and all power is gone.
And thus it was that, under the same instigation which had produced
the Aurora, Behmen at a rush wrote his very fine if very difficult book,
The Three Principles of the Divine Essence. He calls The Three
Principles his A B C, and the easiest of all his books. And William
Law recommends all beginners in Behmen to read alone for some
sufficient time the tenth and twelfth chapters of The Three Principles. I
shall let Behmen describe the contents of his easiest book in his own
words. 'In this second book,' he says, 'there is declared what GOD is,
what Nature is, what the creatures are, what the love and meekness