[16] This is the view set forth in his [Greek] _Gnothi Seauton_ [Know Thyself]. [17] _On the Life of Christ_, part ii. chaps. v. and vii. [18] _Ibid._ part i. chap. viii. [19] _Vom himmlischen Jerusalem in uns_, chap. viii. [20] Weigel enjoins his readers to read Franck's book on "the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." See _On the Life of Christ_, part ii. p. 57. [21] "Faith," he says, "cannot be forced into any person by gallows or pillory." _On the Life of Christ_, part i. chap. xv. [22] _Ibid._ part ii. chap. xiv. This is built on a passage in Franck's _Apologia_. [23] _On the Life of Christ_, part i. chaps. iv. and v. [24] _Ibid._ part i. chap. vi. [25] _Ibid._ part i. chaps. xii. and xiii. [26] Quoted from Tauler by Weigel, _ibid._ chap. vii. See also part iii. chap. i. [27] _Ibid._ part ii. chap. ii. [28] _Op. cit._ chap. xx. [29] _Christ. Gespraech_, chap. ii. [30] In his _Der gueldene Griff_, he tells of a personal spiritual "opening" which is very similar to the one which occurred later in the life of Boehme. He found himself astray in "a wilderness of darkness" and he cried to God for Light to enlighten his soul. "_Suddenly,_" he says, "_the Light came and my eyes were opened so that I saw more clearly than all the teachers in all the world with all their books could teach me._" Chap. xxiv. [31] _Astrologie Theologized_, p. 8. [32] _Ibid._ pp. 16-17. [33] This little book refers with much appreciation to Theophrastus Paracelsus. It uses his theory of "first matter" and his doctrine of "the seven governours of the world," which we shall meet in a new form in Boehme. Another book which carried astrological ideas into religious thought in a much cruder way was Andreas Tentzel's _De ratione naturali arboris vitae et scientiae boni et mali_, etc., which was Pars Secunda of his _Medicinii diastatica_ (Jena, 1629). It was translated into English in 1657 by N. Turner with the title: "The Mumial Treatise of Tentzelius, being a natural account of the Tree of Life and of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, with a mystical interpretation of that great Secret, to wit, the Cabalistical Concordance of the Tree of Life and Death, of Christ and Adam." Tentzel was a famous doctor and disciple of Paracelsus and "flourished" in Germany during the first half of the seventeenth century. {151} CHAPTER IX JACOB BOEHME: HIS LIFE AND SPIRIT[1]