Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

178

Other Semi-Mystic Systems.

thing more, and also something less, than mystics. Even Jacob Behmen was not, exclusively at least, a mystic; he has not therefore been mentioned in his chronological order among the mystics, partly for this reason, and partly also because his influence over Law was so great that he ought not to be confounded with the minor factors which contributed to form the totality of Law's mind, but deserves such prominence as a separate chapter devoted entirely to him can give.

[blocks in formation]

·

CHAPTER XI.

ON JACOB BEHMEN.

THE exact date at which Law first became acquainted with the writings of Jacob Behmen cannot be ascertained; but it was certainly between the years 1733 and 1737, probably immediately after the former date. The circumstances and results of his first meeting with the Teutonic theosopher are happily known to us from his own words, reported by Mr. Okely. In a particular interview,' writes this gentleman, 'I had with Mr. Law a few months before his decease, in answer to the question, when and how he first met with Jacob Behmen's works, he said that he had often reflected upon it with surprise that, although when a curate in London, he had perhaps rummaged every bookseller's shop and book-stall in that metropolis, yet he never met with a single book, or so much as the title of any book, of Jacob Behmen's. The very first notice he had of him was from a treatise called “Ratio et Fides." 1 Soon after which he

' I imagine that this is the treatise described by Law himself in a letter to his friend Langcake, in 1759, in the following words: 'The name of the author of Faith and Reason is Mittenach, a German count. All his later works are in a book called Fides et Ratio; they are chiefly translations from Madam Guion.' But there is also a work by Peter Poiret bearing the same title. It is entitled in full, Fides et Ratio collata ac suo utraque loco redditæ adversus principia Johannis Lockii, published in 1707. It has already been seen that Poiret was not altogether a favourite of Law's, but they would be thoroughly at one in their disagreement with Locke's philosophy. Whether the work referred to in the text be Mittenach's or Poiret's I do not know; probably the former.

180

How Law met with Behmen.

lighted upon the very best and most complete edition of his works. When I first began to read him,' says he, 'he put me into a perfect sweat. But as I discovered sound truths and the glimmerings of a deep ground and sense, even in the passages not then clearly intelligible to me, and found myself, as it were, strongly prompted in my heart to dig in these writings, I followed this impulse with continual aspirations and prayer to God for his help and divine illumination, if I was called to understand them. By reading in this manner again and again, and from time to time, I perceived,' said he, that my heart felt well, and my understanding opened gradually; till at length I found what a treasure was hid in this field." A slightly different but not inconsistent account of the same event is given by Dr. Byrom in his 'Journal.' 'Mr. Law,' he writes, 'said that Dr. Cheyne was the providential occasion of his meeting or knowing of J. Behmen, by a book which the Dr. mentioned to him in a letter, which book mentioned Behmen.'2 The book was, no doubt, the 'Ratio et Fides' mentioned by Mr. Okely.

[ocr errors]

It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that this meeting with Jacob Behmen was the most important era in William Law's life. Other mystics only touched the surface of his nature; Behmen penetrated to its very depths.

1 Memoirs of the Life, Death, Burial, and Wonderful Writings of Jacob Behmen, now first done at large into English, &c., by Francis Okely. Northampton, 1780. Page 105, note. Mr. Walton, in his Notes, &c., for an adequate biography of William Law,' printed for private circulation, relates this incident with a few verbal differences and one that is more than verbal. Instead of the most complete edition,' he describes Law as having met with 'one of the best of all his [J. B.'s] works,' and adds in a bracket that it was 'the Signatura Rerum.' I do not know whence Mr. Walton (who is generally most accurate) derived his information; but as I derived mine from Mr. Okely's own book, a copy of which is in the British Museum, I have thought it better to let the passage stand as it does in the text.

"Byrom's Journal, part ii. vol. ii. p. 363.

How Behmen fascinated Law.

181

If he had never met with Behmen, his sympathy with mystics, even such as Malebranche and Tauler, who affected him most of all, would have attracted little attention. He would have been known only as one of the very ablest among the many able writers against Deism and Erastianism, and as one of the few really successful authors of works of practical divinity. But the Teutonic theosopher took possession of his whole soul, and gave to all his later writings a bias which makes them far more attractive to a small minority, and far more repulsive to a vast majority, of divinity students than any of his earlier works are. Having found this treasure, Law characteristically at once threw himself heart and soul into the examination of it. I taught myself,' he tells us, 'the High Dutch language, on purpose to know the original words of the blessed Jacob.' He made diligent search after other theosophical writers, and studied especially the writings of Andreas Freher, a commentator and illustrator of Behmen, who had died only a few years previously (1728). He not only made himself master of Freher's writings, but took the trouble to copy out many portions of them; he also obtained possession of some wonderful symbolical illustrations of Behmenism drawn by Freher, which are still extant. He procured and studied the MSS. of the learned Dr. Francis Lee, and other Philadelphians, who were tinged with Behmenism. He purposed publishing a new edition and translation of the whole of Behmen's works, which purpose, however, he did not live to carry out; but there is not one single work of his own written after this period which does not show obvious traces of the influence which Behmen exercised over him.

Before inquiring what was the secret of this influence, it seems necessary to describe briefly the life and the

[blocks in formation]

general characteristics of the writings of this extraordinary man.1

Jacob Behmen, or Böhme-for that was his proper name, though I have preferred to call him by the name under which he was known by Law and the majority of English readers-was born in 1575 at Old Seidenburg, a village one mile and a half from the town of Gorlitz in Upper Lusatia. His father was a herdsman, and in his early years Jacob helped him to tend the cattle; and it is highly probable that in this employment he acquired that love of nature which he afterwards manifested so remarkably. When he grew older, he was placed at a school, where he learned to read and write, but apparently little else. He was then apprenticed to a shoemaker at Gorlitz, married the daughter of a butcher, and in due time became a master shoemaker.

Such was his outer life, and it is scarcely possible to conceive one less favourable to the development of mysticism. But, under these unpromising outward circumstances, he was cultivating an inner life of which his friends little dreamed. In the intervals of shoemaking he found time to read controversial divinity, and was so shocked at the bitterness displayed by the theologians of the day that he began to be troubled with doubts about the truth of Christianity altogether. But he was of a pious nature, and he prayed to God earnestly and continually to send him light. And he found what he sought. 'He began to ob

The principal authorities I have used in sketching Behmen's life are the Works of Jacob Behmen, the Teutonic Theosopher, and Life of the Author, in four volumes published in 1764, and falsely attributed to William Law; Ewald's Briefe über die alte Mystik, &c.; Memoirs of the Life, Death, Burial, and Wonderful Writings of Jacob Behmen, now first done at large into English, by Francis Okely, 1780; Enfield's History of Philosophy, book ix. chap. iii. "Of the Theosophists'; Hallam's Literature of Europe, the article on 'Böhme' in the Penny Cyclopædia; Dorner's History of Protestant Theology, vol. i.; Blunt's Dictionary of Sects, &c.

« AnteriorContinuar »