Jacob Behmen | Page 3

At which I did exceedingly admire, and, though it passed my understanding how it happened, I thereupon turned my heart to GOD to praise Him for it. For I saw and knew the Being of all Beings; the Byss and the Abyss; as, also, the Generation of the Son and the Procession of the Spirit. I saw the descent and original of this world also, and of all its creatures. I saw in their order and outcome the Divine world, the angelical world, paradise, and then this fallen and dark world of our own. I saw the beginning of the good and the evil, and the true origin and existence of each of them. All of which did not only cause me great wonder but also a great joy and a great fear. And then it came with commanding power into my mind that I must set down the same in pen and ink for a memorial to myself; albeit, I could hardly contain or express what I had seen. For twelve years this went on in me. Sometimes the truth would hit me like a sudden smiting storm of rain; and then there would be the clear sunshine after the rain. All which was to teach me that GOD will manifest Himself in the soul of man after what manner and what measure it pleases Him and as it seems good in His sight.'
No human being knew all this time what Jacob Behmen was passing through, and he never intended that any human being should know. But, with all his humility, and all his love of obscurity, he could not remain hidden. Just how it came about we are not fully told; but, long before his book was finished, a nobleman in the neighbourhood, who was deeply interested in the philosophy and the theology of that day, somehow got hold of Behmen's papers and had them copied out and spread abroad, to Behmen's great surprise and great distress. Copy after copy was stealthily made of Behmen's manuscript, till, most unfortunately for both of them, a copy came into the hands of Behmen's parish minister. But for that accident, so to call it, we would never have heard the name of GREGORY RICHTER, First Minister of Goerlitz, nor could we have believed that any minister of JESUS CHRIST could have gone so absolutely mad with ignorance and envy and anger and ill-will. The libel is still preserved that Behmen's minister drew out against the author of Aurora, and the only thing it proves to us is this, that its author must have been a dull-headed, coarse-hearted, foul-mouthed man. Richter's persecution of poor Behmen caused Behmen lifelong trouble; but, at the same time, it served to advertise his genius to his generation, and to manifest to all men the meekness, the humility, the docility, and the love of peace of the persecuted man. 'Pastor-Primarius Richter,' says a bishop of his own communion, 'was a man full of hierarchical arrogance and pride. He had only the most outward apprehension of the dogmatics of his day, and he was totally incapable of understanding Jacob Behmen.' But it is not for the limitations of his understanding that Pastor Richter stands before us so laden with blame. The school is a small one still that, after two centuries of study and prayer and a holy life, can pretend to understand the whole of the Aurora. WILLIAM LAW, a man of the best understanding, and of the humblest heart, tells us that his first reading of Behmen put him into a 'perfect sweat' of astonishment and awe. No wonder, then, that a man of Gregory Richter's narrow mind and hard heart was thrown into such a sweat of prejudice and anger and ill-will.
I do not propose to take you down into the deep places where Jacob Behmen dwells and works. And that for a very good reason. For I have found no firm footing in those deep places for my own feet. I wade in and in to the utmost of my ability, and still there rise up above me, and stretch out around me, and sink down beneath me, vast reaches of revelation and speculation, attainment and experience, before which I can only wonder and worship. See Jacob Behmen working with his hands in his solitary stall, when he is suddenly caught up into heaven till he beholds in enraptured vision The Most High Himself. And then, after that, see him swept down to hell, down to sin, and down into the bottomless pit of the human heart. Jacob Behmen, almost more than any other man whatsoever, is carried up till he moves like a holy angel or a glorified saint among things unseen and eternal. Jacob Behmen is of the race of the seers,