Jacob Behmen was the exact opposite of Erasmus, and of all such light and
elastic men. Melancholy was Jacob Behmen's special temperament and
peculiar complexion. He had long studied, and watched, and wrestled
with, and prayed over that complexion at home. And thus it is, no doubt,
that he is so full, and so clear, and so sure-footed, and so impressive,
and so full of fellow-feeling in his treatment of this special
complexion. Behmen's greatest disciple has assimilated his master's
teaching in this matter of complexion also, and has given it out again in
his own clear, plain, powerful, classical manner, especially in his
treatise on _Christian Regeneration_. Let all preachers and pastors who
would master the _rationale_ of temptation, and who would ground their
directions and their comforts to their people in the nature of things, as
well as in the word of GOD, make Jacob Behmen and William Law and
Prebendary Clark their constant study. 'I write for no other purpose,'
says Behmen, 'than that men may learn how to know themselves. Seek the
noble knowledge of thyself. Seek it and you will find a heavenly
treasure which will not be eaten by moths, and which no thief shall ever
take away.'

I shall not attempt to enter on the thorny thicket of Jacob Behmen's
polemical and apologetical works. I shall not even load your mind with
their unhappy titles. His five apologies occupy in bulk somewhere about
a tenth part of his five quarto volumes. And full as his apologies and
defences are of autobiographic material, as well as of valuable
expansions and explanations of his other books, yet at their best they
are all controversial and combative in their cast and complexion; and,
nobly as Behmen has written on the subject of controversy, it was not
given even to him, amid all the misunderstandings, misrepresentations,
injuries, and insults he suffered from, always to write what we are glad
and proud and the better to read.