XIIX. This Roman numeral 18 likely refers to the section or page numbering within a larger collection of Boehme's works.

THEOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS original: "QUAESTIONES THEOSOPHICAE"

or

A Consideration of Divine Revelation,

posed in 177 Questions.

Author’s Preface to the Reader.

It is written: The natural man perceives nothing of the Spirit of God; it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand it. (1 Corinthians 2:14.) And again it is written: The Spirit searches all things, even the depths of the Godhead. (1 Corinthians 2:10.)

If Master Smart-Aleckoriginal: "Meister Klügling." This is a derogatory term used by Boehme to describe pedantic scholars or rationalists who try to understand spiritual mysteries using only human logic rather than divine inspiration. should wish to set himself to these questions and explain them without Divine Light, he would not be able to do so; and he might even consider it a sin to ask so deeply, because he himself cannot understand it. To such a person we say: let him leave it to the one to whom the Spirit of God wishes to give it (the Spirit who searches all things through the spirit of man), because to him it is still an incomprehensibility, and seems to him to be impossible.

But to those who love Jesus, we say that it is very much possible to search and to understand, and it is no impossible thing. For in a true Christian dwells Christ, in whom all the treasures of hidden wisdom are revealed; he alone knows it in the Spirit of Christ, and not in his own nature and ability. As we have clearly set forth and descri- The text cuts off here due to the page break, continuing the word "described" on the next page.