Jacob, called by his disciples the Teutonic Theosophist, and founder of the sect of Boehmists, was born in 1575, at a village near Goerlitz in Upper Lusatia. He was bred a shoemaker, and marrying, supported a large family by this occupation; until, after amusing himself with chemistry, a visionary turn of mind, heated by sermons and German divinity, got the better of his common sense, and produced raptures, mystical ecstasies, and notions of divine illumination. These he first gave vent to in 1612, by means of a treatise entitled Aurora, or the Rising of the Sun; being a mixture or jumble of astrological, philosophical, chemical, and theological extravagances, written in a quaint obscure style. This was censured by the magistrates of Goerlitz, who at the instigation of the clergy caused it to be seized and prohibited; but Boehmen, nevertheless, continued to dream and to scribble, and in 1619 published his treatise De Tribus Principiis, inculcating a species of Spinozism, namely, that the operations of grace are subjected to laws analogous to those which nature has imposed in the purification of metals, and that God is to be regarded as the matter of the universe, which has produced every thing by way of emanation. After this he went to Dresden, where he was examined by some theologians more indulgent than those of Goerlitz, and found irreproachable. Soon after his return, in 1624, he died at Goerlitz, leaving a great number of treatises On the Celestial and Terrestrial Mystery, and on the Intellectual Life. "It is not possible," says Mosheim, "to find greater obscurity than there is in these pitiable writings, which exhibit an incongruous mixture of chemical terms, mystical jargon, and absurd visions." Nevertheless, in the last century, Boehmen found a zealous apologist in William Law, author of Christian Perfection, who published an English translation of his work, in two vols. 4to. He had a great many disciples, some of whom, like Kuhlmann, who was burned at Moscow in 1684, were wild and dangerous fanatics. All his works were collected and reprinted at Amsterdam in 1730, under the title of Theosophia Revelata.