Calling and perseverance · Lexicon

From the book

Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

Heinrich Khunrath · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordCalling and perseverance regulate both who undertakes the work and how one remains with its recognized ground.
In KhunrathThe defence on pp. 163–1642 concerns Khunrath's right to write before completion.
In this edition“Calling” renders the religious and occupational force of the Latin vocatio in its German sentence.
A reading distinctionThe p. 164 margin explicitly supplies Jeremiah 48:10 for the curse on fraudulent work.

Meaning

Calling and perseverance regulate both who undertakes the work and how one remains with its recognized ground. Khunrath rejects the idea that every practitioner must follow another person's timetable of publication, while also condemning men who abandon their proper trades for an imagined easy route to wealth. Constancy is therefore neither conformity to every human example nor indiscriminate persistence in a false subject.

Use in the book

The defence on pp. 163–1642 concerns Khunrath's right to write before completion. If another chose to publish only after finishing, or after death, that example is no divine command upon him. The proverb that one head would require one enormous hat mocks uniformity. Different people receive different divine promptings and perform the work given to them for the building-up of truth. Khunrath prays to be as God's hand, and invokes the curse on fraudulent doing of the Lord's work.

This individuality is sharply bounded. At p. 169 he depicts a rabble of common laborants intruding into the Art against their ordinary trades and God's and Nature's calling, seduced by greed and sloth. These are polemical judgments about his opponents, not neutral evidence of their actual occupations or motives. The contrast nonetheless makes clear that claiming a calling is not, for him, a licence for any chosen pursuit.

Perseverance concerns adherence to the recognized subject. The p. 166 margin warns against changing one's opinion every day, week, month or year, and the satire on p. 170 portrays precisely that fickleness. At pp. 185–1862 the firmly held truth of the first matter is said to support the philosopher through temptations of doubt and contentious disputations. Mere duration of labour does not confer such stability; the wrong material can absorb endless expense in vain. The order remains right recognition, faithful adherence and properly directed work.

These passages give the author a rhetoric of freedom and duty at once: freedom from compulsory imitation of another person's career, duty towards what God has entrusted, and steadiness under disagreement.

Places to read

1599 p. 145 · marginPerseverance to the end accompanies the promise of participation in secret recognition
1599 p. 163Different publication choices are defended by the one-head, one-hat proverb
1599 p. 164Distinct divine promptings are ordered towards the edification of truth
1599 p. 166 · marginThe reader is warned against frequently changing opinions about the matter
1599 p. 169Opponents are accused of entering the Art against their calling
1599 p. 186Constancy is promised support through doubts and disputations

Translation in this edition

“Calling” renders the religious and occupational force of the Latin vocatio in its German sentence. The maxim Perseuerantes coronabuntur should not be presented as a verbatim biblical verse: the modern note treats it as a commonplace with biblical resonances. Preserve the distinction between constancy in a recognized truth and stubbornness in a pseudo-Magnesia.

Source note

The p. 164 margin explicitly supplies Jeremiah 48:10 for the curse on fraudulent work. The adjoining craftsman’s-hand prayer has no separately printed biblical locator.