Under the pressure, from without and from within, he resolved after five years of repression to break the seal of silence and give the world his message. Writing to a dear friend, whom he called "a plant of God," he says: "My very dear brother in the life of God, you are more acceptable to me in that it was you who awaked me out of my sleep, that I might go on to bring forth fruit in the life of God--and I want you to know that after I was awakened _a strong smell was given to me in the life of God_."[38] During the next six years (1618-24) he wrote almost incessantly, producing, from 1620 on, book after book in rapid succession.[39] In 1622, he informs a friend that he { 166} has "laid aside his trade to serve God and his brothers,"[40] and in 1623, he says that he has written without ceasing during the autumn and winter. He felt throughout his life that the "illumination," which broke upon him in the year 1600, steadily increased with the years, and he came to look upon his first book as only the crude attempt of a child as compared with his later works. "The Day," he writes in 1620, "has now overtaken the _Aurora_ [the morning glow]; it has grown full daylight and the morning is extinguished."[41] He says, with artlessness, that when he wrote the _Aurora_, he was not yet accustomed to the Spirit. The heavenly joy, indeed, met him and he followed the Spirit's guidance, but much of his own wild and untamed nature still remained to mar his work. Each successive book marks a growth of "the spiritual lily" in him, he thinks: "Each book from the first is ten times deeper!"[42]
Once again, the zeal of a friend brought Boehme into the storm-centre of persecution. Until 1623, his works circulated only in manuscript and were kept from the eye of his ecclesiastical enemy, but toward the end of that year, an admirer, Sigismund von Schweinitz, printed three of his little books--_True Repentance_; _True Resignation_; and _The Supersensual Life_--in one volume under the title _The Way to Christ_. Richter was immediately aroused and poured forth his feelings in some desperately bad verses:
Quot continentur lineae, blasphemiae Tot continentur in libro sutorio, Qui nil nisi picem redolet sutoriam,