Memoirs of the life, death, burial, and wonderful writings, of Jacob Behmen

...revelation original: "lation" — likely the conclusion of the word "revelation" or "consolation" from the previous page. designed for it (and which is indeed its birthright); so, through the great mercy of God, he has not by any means been able to appease the immense cravings of his heart with anything short of, and less than, the original, essential, living, inward Truth himself.

In his early years of piety, after having been first awakened by God himself, he encountered and was a great reader of Mr. William Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, and also of his Christian Perfection. These he well understood in their internal purpose original: "internal Drift"; and therefore practiced them, despite great reproach and opposition, as far as human weakness would allow. But in the course of time, being unaware of the trap and unhappily too addicted to reasoning and systematic religion, a set of more plausible notions—based on the literal word of Scripture—gradually stole in upon him. These ideas cooled his affection for the very awakening and enlivening heart's reality, which, despite all their systematic defects, strongly mark and distinguish those pious and brilliant original: "ingenious" treatises. And when the work by the same author regarding Regeneration first came out, he thought—as it was once expressed in a periodical work*—that "this venerable man supported an unrealistic original: "airy" system; and that no good man could read his 'reveries' without regret, nor could fail to lament the deviation of so pious and forceful original: "nervous" — in the 18th century, this meant vigorous or strong-styled a pen into the wilds of mysticism and the inescapable labyrinth of Behmenism Behmenism The teachings of Jakob Böhme (1575–1624), a German mystic whose complex writings focused on the inner spiritual life. and absurdity."

But finding upon trial, to his great disappointment and humiliation, that his new system of ideas original: "notional system" and self-devised ways (following the "doctrines and commandments of men") had not done all for him they promised, and which he might have justly expected of them; he, in the middle of a dilemma more painful than can be described, often felt something like secret whispers within. These prompted him to strip himself of every later-acquired sectarian objection, at least enough to give the works of his first instructor (especially the later ones) a fair and serious reading.

* Christian's Magazine for May 1760.