“ The theologian is staggered by a language which breaks the fixed association of theological phrases, and strangely reversing the usual point of view, characteristically pictures God as underneath rather than above. Nature rises out of Him; we sink into Him. The Ungrund of the unmanifested Godhead is boldly represented in the English translations of Boehme by the word Abyss, in a sense altogether unexplained by its Biblical use. In the Theologia Germanica this tendency to regard God as the substantia, the underlying ground of all things, is accepted as a foundation for piety ”

“ In the Aurora nothing save good proceeds from the Ungrund, though there is good that abides and good that fall;—Christ and Lucifer. In the second stage of his writing the antithesis is directly generated as such; good and its contrary are coincidently given from the one creative source, as factors of life and movement; while in the third period evil is a direct outcome of the primary principle of divine manifestation—it is the wrath side of God. Corresponding to this change we trace a significant variation in the moral end contemplated by Boehme as the object of this world’s life and history. ”

“ Then he is artless, clear and strong; and no man can help listening to him, whether he dive deep down with the conviction “ohne Gift und Grimm kein Leben,” or rise with the belief that “the being of all beings is a wrestling power,” or soar with the persuasion that Love “in its height is as high as God.” The mystical poet of Silesia, Angelus Silesius, discerned where Boehme’s truest power lay when he sang—
The three periods of Boehme’s authorship constitute three distinct stages in the development of his philosophy. ”