or BORAX, JACOB, founder of the sect of Boehmists, and called by his disciples the Teutonic Theosophist, was born in 1575, near Goerlitz in Upper Lusatia. He was bred a shoemaker, and for some time supported a large family by this occupation; but having dabbled in chemistry, his mind, heated by sermons and German divinity, became subject to raptures, mystical ecstasies, and notions of divine illumination. To these he first gave vent in 1612, in a treatise entitled Aurora, or the Rising of the Sun, a mixture of astrological, philosophical, chemical, and theological extravagances, written in a quaint and obscure style. This work was censured by the magistrates of Goerlitz, who at the instigation of the clergy endeavoured to suppress it; yet Boehm 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 substance of the universe, which has produced everything by way of emanation. He afterwards went to Dresden, where he was examined by some theologians more indulgent than those of Goerlitz, and found irreproachable. He died at Goerlitz in 1624, 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, Boehm found a zealous apologist in William Law, the pious author of Christian Perfection, who published an English translation of his work, in two vols. 4to. Boehm 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 1682, and again in 1730, under the title of Theosophia Revelata.