rsons pull and hale the Scriptures to prove it, though, indeed, they
neither have the knowledge of the true God nor the understanding of
Scripture. These justifiers and disputers assist the Devil steadfastly
and pervert God's truth and change it into lies."[35] He closed his
book with these daring words: "Should Peter or Paul seem to have
written otherwise, then look to the essence, look to the heart [_i.e._
to interior meaning]. If you lay hold of the heart of God you have
ground enough."[36] His entire conception of salvation was, too, as we
shall see, vastly different from the prevailing orthodox conception,
and furthermore he was only a layman, innocent of the schools, and yet
he was claiming to speak as an almost infallible instrument of a fresh
revelation of God. Theologians of the type of the Primarius Richter
need no other provocation to account for their relentless pursuit of
local prophets that appear in the domain of their authority.

Meantime Boehme's fame was slowly spreading, and he was drawing into
sympathetic fellowship with himself a number of high-minded and serious
men who were {165} dissatisfied with the current orthodox teaching. In
this group of friends who found comfort in the fresh message of Boehme
were Dr. Balthazar Walther, director of the Chemical Laboratory of
Dresden, Dr. Tobias Kober, physician at Goerlitz, a disciple of
Paracelsus, Abraham von Franckenberg, who calls Jacob "our God-taught
man," Doctor Cornelius Weissner, who became intimate with him in 1618,
and the nobleman Carl von Endern, who copied out the entire manuscript
of the _Aurora_. These friends frequently encouraged Boehme to break
his enforced silence, and he himself was restless and melancholy,
feeling that he was "entrusted with a talent which he ought to put to
usury and not return to God singly and without improvement, like the
lazy servant." "It was with me," he writes, describing his years of
silence, "as when a seed is hidden in the earth. It grows up in storm
and rough weather, against all reason. In winter time, all is dead,
and reason says: 'It is all over with it.' But the precious seed
within me sprouted and grew green, oblivious of all storms, and amid
disgrace and ridicule it has blossomed forth into a lily!"[37]

Under the pressure, from without and from within, he resolved after
five years of repression to break the seal of silence and give the
world his message. Writing to a dear friend, whom he