JACOB EEHMBN. 
preface confirming the reality, as to the point of spirits, of this rela- 
tion, and shewing the several good uses that sober Christian may 
make of all. By Meric Casaubon, D. D. Lond. 1659,” fob 
This book made a great noise upon its first publication ; and many 
years after, the credit of it was revived by one of the ablest mathema- 
ticians and philosophers of his time, the celebrated Dr. Hooke, who 
believed that not only Casaubon, but arcbbishop Usher, and other 
learned men, were entirely mistaken in their notions about this book; 
and that, in reality, our author. Dee, never fell under any such delusions, 
but being^a man of great art and intrigue, made use of this strange 
method of waiting, to conceal things of a political nature, and, instead 
of a pretended enthusiast, was a real spy. — But there are several 
reasons which will not suffer us to suppose this. One is, that Dee 
began these actions ii^ England ; for which, if we suppose the whole 
treatise to be written in cipher, there is no account can be given, any 
more than for pursuing the same practices in king James's time, who 
cannot be imagined to have used him as a spy. Another, that he 
admitted foreigners, such as Laski, Rosenberg, &c. to be present at 
these consultations with spirits ; which is not reconcilcable with the 
notion of his being intrusted with j)oli(ical secrets. Lastly, upon tlm 
return of Dee from Bohemia, Kelly did actually send an account to 
the queen, of practices against her life ; but then this w^as in a plain 
and open method, wdiich would never have been taken, if there had 
been any such mysterious correspondence between Dee and her minis- 
ters, as Hooke suggests. In the latter end of his life he became 
miserably poor. It is highly probable that he remained under these 
delusions to his death; for he was actually providing for a new 
journey into Germany, when, w^orn out by age and distemper, he 
died in 160B, aged eighty, and was buried at Mortlake. 
Jacob Beiimen, called the Teutonic Philosopher. 
The person was the founder of a sect called Behmists, and was 
born of poor parents at a village near Gorlitz, in Upper Lusatia, in 
1575* At the age of ten he was sent to school, where he learned to 
read and write, after which he was put apprentice to a shoemaker, 
and in 1594, he became a master, and entered into the state of marriage. 
In the year 1600 he is said to have fallen into a spiritual trance, or 
ecstasy, for seven days, during which he was not only drawn nearer to 
jGod, but had w'onderful things revealed to him. In 1610 he fell into 
another trance of the like kind ; and that the remembrance of what 
had been disclosed to him might not be lost, he wrote, in 1612, a 
book called Aurora, the style of which is exceedingly dark and ob- 
scure. Gregorius Pdchter, a clergyman at Gorlitz, having seen this 
work, resolved to get it suppressed, and accused Behmen before the 
council, who ordered the book, though not yet completed, to be 
seized and shut up in the town-house. Paulus Scipio, however, one of 
the burgomasters, sent a copy of it to George von Pflug, marshal of 
the household to the elector of Saxony, who transmitted it to Amster- 
dam to be printed. In 1619 he wrote another book, on the Three Prin- 
ciples, to which in the course of a few years he added several others. 
