Preface

the addition to the biography of his dear brother J. G. G. likely Johann Georg Gichtel (1638–1710), a prominent German mystic and colleague of Johann Wilhelm Überfeld and otherwise had notoriously proceeded; for which he had very important spiritual reasons original: "gemüthliche Urſachen"; referring to matters of the inner soul or disposition, and alongside those this one as well: that often only purely external matters, which were of no concern to anyone else (as he put it), are contained in the letters, or even personal matters which are not suitable to be made public.

It is, however, not meager extracts Extracten: concise selections or summaries of longer spiritual texts that we are providing, but rather fully developed subject matters in which nothing has been omitted that pertains to the topic, as the context itself demonstrates; and in which we have followed the natural order as they were found in the letters according to the dates original: "datis"; Latin for dates. In everything we have held exactly and faithfully to the expression used by the author original: "Auctore"; Latin for author; especially when we—as was the case in the vast majority—could consult his own handwriting, in which we, without urgent necessity, and when