Still Running Off at the Keyboard

FROM JACOB BOEHME TO WILLIAM LAW AND LOUIS-CLAUDE DE SAINT MARTIN TO PENTECOSTALISM TO CHARISMATIC RENEWAL

From the same kingsgarden.org Martinist website that brought you The Order of the World Mother comes an introduction to Martinism which contains a section titled "Notes on Louis-Claude de Saint Martin by Manly P. Hall" where you can read:

The writings of Saint-Martin were brought to the consideration of Voltaire. In 1787, Saint-Martin went to Italy with Prince Galatzin, then journeyed to Strasbourg, where he further studied the writings of Boehme, translating parts of them into French. Back in Paris, he was arrested during the Revolution simply because he was a gentleman by birth. His affiliations with the Freemasons saved him from the Reign of Terror.

He visited London, where he remained for several months, made the acquaintance of the astronomer Herschel, and contacted the writings of William Law, the great interpreter of Boehme. Saint-Martin never married, but had a wide circle of friends and admirers, including many leaders of the intellectual world.

The central concept of Saint-Martin's mystical philosophy is that man remains divine in spite of the "fall" reported in the Scriptures. Within the human being lies dormant a high spiritual quality of which man is not always conscious, and which he must develop or release by freeing himself from the illusion of materialism.

Another source--Irving Hexham's _Concise Dictionary of Religion_--offers the following entries:

BOEHME, Jacob (1575-1624): German LUTHERAN MYSTIC whose speculations about GOD and His relationship to CREATION drew upon NEOPLATONISM, the JEWISH CABBALA and ALCHEMY and was expressed in his The Way to Christ (1624). An obscure writer who has been accused of being both a PANTHEIST and a DUALIST. His work influenced PIETISM, ROMANTICISM and modern NEW AGE mystical movements as well as the writings of William LAW and Isaac NEWTON.

William Law translated Boehme. John Wesley, founder of the Holiness Movement, looked to William Law for inspiration.

The Wesley Center Online notes that William Law was John Wesley's mentor for a critical period of his quest for holiness:

In John Wesley's prolonged quest for holiness as the ground upon which, in his thinking, he must claim justification in God's sight, he became enamored with the Christian mystics and their pursuit of perfection. Some of these mystics were what Albert C. Outler (1) has called voluntaristic and others quietistic. By the former we understand Outler to mean activists who take Jesus Christ as their pattern, and strive by a sirenuous legalism to achieve a perfection in accord therewith. Such was William Law, an older contemporary of Wesley and his mentor for a critical period of his quest.

The quietists, on the other hand, were subjectivists who sought inward union with Jesus Christ by way of prayer, passive contemplation, and detachment from the world because of its inherent corruption.

German Moravian Pietism also influenced Wesley according to the _Concise Dictionary of Religion_:

WESLEY, John (1703-179l): English founder of METHODISM who was influenced by German MORAVIAN PIETY and ZINZENDORF. He experienced a dramatic CONVERSION at a PRAYER MEETING in 1738 at Aldersgate Street, London which led him to abandon controversial FORMS of Ministry to preaching to workers and the poor in fields at Bristol the following year. A compulsive traveller, he made hundreds of journeys on horseback preaching, making CONVERTS and organizing Methodist SOCIETIES throughout England, Ireland and Scotland leading to the creation of the METHODIST CHURCH in 1791. A strong opponent of slavery, author of educational treatises, Biblical commentaries, etc., and twenty-three collections of HYMNS. His Journal (1735-90) is both a spiritual classic and a vivid account of life in eighteenth century Britain.

In his book _The Century of the Holy Spirit: 100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal_, in a segment subtitled "Holiness Roots," Vinson Synan writes:

John Wesley, an Anglican priest, experienced his evangelical conversion in a meeting at Aldersgate Street in 1738 where, as he said, "my heart was strangely warmed." This he called his "new birth."

From Wesley, Pentecostals also inherited the idea of a crisis "second blessing" subsequent to salvation. This experience he variously called "entire sanctification," "perfect love," "Christian pefection," or "heart purity." Wesley's colleague John Fletcher was the first to call this a "baptism in the Holy Spirit," an experience that brought spiritual power to the recipient as well as inner cleansing. (p. 2)

Synan also discusses Wesleyan Pentecostal Churches and Wesleyan Pentecostals in the book.

According to the Wesley Center Online article linked above, like the Martinists, Wesley believed in a doctrine centered in the heart.

A year or two later he read William Law's two classics of devotion, Christian Perfection and Serious Call. These led him "to be all devoted to God--to give Him," he said, "all my soul, my body, my substance."...On January 1, 1833 he reports a sermon which he preached in St. Mary's, Oxford, on the subject "The Circumcision of the Heart." In that sermon he defined a "circumcised heart" in terms of cleansing, holiness, and becoming "perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect."

Jacob Boehme and Martinism are with us today in the modern charismatic movement. The laying on of hands practiced in Martinism and the laying on of hands practiced in the charismatic renewal are the same thing. The secret societies feared and condemned by many popes have moved into the Roman Catholic Church and found they are welcome once Vatican II rewrote our doctrine. What's more, they give every appearance of having the blessing of several popes.



Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!