Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 29, 2025
A light, elastic, Erasmus- like nature, is the exception among men of real genius. At any rate, Jacob Behmen was the exact opposite of Erasmus, and of all such light and elastic men. Melancholy was Jacob Behmen's special temperament and peculiar complexion. He had long studied, and watched, and wrestled with, and prayed over that complexion at home.
Behmen's treatise has been well described by Walton as containing the philosophy of temptation; and by Martensen as displaying a most profound knowledge of the human heart. Behmen sets about his task as a ductor dubitantium in a masterly manner. He takes in hand the comfort and direction of sin-distressed souls in a characteristically deep, inward, and thorough-going way.
It is a fundamental doctrine of Behmen's that the fall would have been immediate and eternal death to Adam and Eve had not the Divine Word, the Seed of the woman, entered their hearts, and kept a footing in their hearts, and in the hearts of all their children, against the fulness of time when He would take our flesh and work out our redemption.
I would recommend the enterprising and unconquerable student to make leisure so as to master Behmen's Preface to the Mysterium Magnum at the very least. And if he does that, and is not drawn on from that to be a student of Behmen for the rest of his days, then, whatever else his proper field in life may be, it is not mystical or philosophical theology.
Though there is a great deal of needless and wearisome repetition in Jacob Behmen's writings, at the same time there is scarcely a single subject in the whole range of theology on which he does not throw a new, an intense, and a brilliant light.
And if the height and the depth, the massiveness, the stupendousness, and the grandeur, as well as the sweetness, and the beauty, and the warmth, and the fruitfulness of a doctrine of GOD is any argument or evidence of its truth, then Behmen's magnificent doctrine of the GODHEAD is surely proved to demonstration and delight. GOD is the Essence of all Essences to Behmen.
He desires only to confer and offer his understanding of the Scriptures on both sides, answering reason's objections, and manifesting the truth for the conjoining, uniting, and reconciling of all parties in love. And that he has not been wholly unsuccessful we may believe when we hear one of Behmen's ablest commentators writing of his Election as 'a superlatively helpful book, and again, as a 'profoundly instructive treatise. The workman-like way in which Behmen sets about his treatment of the Election of Grace, commonly called Predestination, will be seen from the titles of some of his chapters.
'When I read Behmen's book, says Schopenhauer, 'I cannot withhold either admiration or emotion. At his far too early death Behmen left four treatises behind him in an unfinished condition.
And thus I commit my reader to the sweet love of GOD. The Three Principles, according to CHRISTOPHER WALTON, was the first book of Behmen's that William Law ever held in his hand. That, then, was the title-page, and those were the contents, that threw that princely and saintly mind into such a sweat.
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.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking