CHARLES BEATTY ALEXANDER 
 KASPAR VON SCHWENKFELD 
 HIS LIFE, CHRISTOLOGY 
 AND THEOLOGY 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
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In considering any body of exiles, one’s 
 mind naturally drifts to thoughts of other exiles. 
 Those who accompanied Jason were in pursuit 
 of the Golden Fleece, and from the happy, 
 comfortable and even wealthy environment of 
 members of your society, it would seem as if 
 your ancestors too had discovered, if not the 
 Golden Fleece, a reasonable deposit of gold. 
 They brought with them far more than they 
 have since found. ‘They came poor in worldly 
 goods. ‘They had no money for their passage, 
 but they brought gifts richer than gold or 
 raiment. ‘The little company brought invisible 
 gifts of music, science, godliness, toleration, 
 love of one’s neighbors, healing power, teach- 
 ing skill, love of children, courage, thrift, com- 
 passion and invention. ‘This is in part their 
 contribution to the Spirit of America, and with- 
 out such possessions our country would be poor 
 indeed. 
 
 Then one thinks of the Pilgrim Fathers. 
 All early American history has been so largely 
 in the hands of New England writers, especially 
 those of Cambridge, that other exiles from the 
 
old country, in olden days, have had very little - 
 chance of proper appreciation. The Schwenk- 
 telders had the misfortune, however, of landing 
 too far away from the best publicity bureau of 
 their times. It is the irony of fate that the Pul- 
 orim Fathers were trying for a port farther 
 south when the winds and waves led them 
 to Plymouth and fame. Had your ancestors 
 landed on Plymouth Rock, every child at every 
 school would be fed up on their high emprise 
 and their lofty faith. But they have had to 
 share the fate of the Scotch Irish, who came to 
 Pennsylvania, and who hardly got any histor- 
 ical credit until Theodore Roosevelt’s book on 
 the making of the northwest and the efforts of 
 the Scotch Irish Society managed in a measure 
 to restore them to the map. 
 
 It is, therefore, highly praiseworthy on the 
 part of the members of your society to keep the 
 Schwenkfeldian flag nailed to the mast. It isa 
 fine tribute to the idealistic and exalted atmos- 
 phere of the best blood in Pennsylvania that in 
 this materialistic age, and in this city of vast 
 present and potential wealth, there should be a 
 sroup of men and women interested enough in 
 
 the life and work of Schwenkfeld and his fol- 
 
 fs 
 
lowers to come out this evening to hear a wan- 
 dering stranger from a neighboring city seek 
 to make a contribution to the object of their in- 
 terest and quest. 
 
 Among the early enthusiastic advocates of 
 the Reformation was Kasper von Schwenkfeld, 
 a councilor at the court of the Duke of Lieg- 
 nitz in Silesia. At the time of Luther’s mani- 
 festo he was young man, 25 years of age, and 
 threw himself into the new movement with 
 energy. Although never ordained as a clergy- 
 man, he took a prominent part in religious 
 work, and it was mainly through his efforts 
 that the Reformation gained a stronghold in 
 Silesia. He was, however, independent in his | 
 thinking, and developed certain lines of belief ( 
 which were not acceptable to other reformers. 
 
 Strongly opposed to the formation of a 
 church, he did no more than gather congrega- 
 tions, and was compelled to flee from one place 
 to another to escape persecution, until he died 
 in Ulm in 1561. After his death, under the 
 conditions of the times, any ecclesiastical or- 
 ganization of his followers was impracticable, 
 although meetings and occasional conferences, 
 were held in Silesia, Switzerland and Italy. 
 
 3 
 
Early in the eighteenth century the question 
 arose of emigration to America, and in Sep- 
 tember, 1734, about 200 persons landed at 
 Philadelphia. Allegiance to the civil au- 
 thorities having been pledged, they devoted the 
 next day after their arrival to thanksgiving 
 for their deliverance from oppression, George 
 Weiss taking the lead, and they have continued 
 to celebrate a memorial day ever since. Unable 
 to secure land as they desired for a distinct com- 
 munity, they obtained homes in Montgomery, 
 Bucks, Berks, and Lehigh Counties, Pa., where 
 the greater number of their descendants are now 
 to be found. ‘The character of their early life 
 in this country is indicated by their literary and 
 doctrinal activities, the adoption of a school sys- 
 tem in 1764, and the establishment of a charity 
 fund in 1774, through which they have since 
 cared for the unfortunate members of the com- 
 munity. 
 
 The Spirit of America is a sacred essence 
 distilled from the perfect flowers of many 
 lands and many climes. It is not an easy thing 
 to define true Americanism for it is a com- 
 posite of the best that has been thought and 
 done in the old world, brought to a higher 
 
 4 
 
perfection by the influence of the greater 
 freedom and richer resources of the new civil- 
 ization. Anthropologists tell us that in Amer- 
 ica there has been developed a new type of man 
 and woman. ‘The American of today is differ- 
 ent physically as well as mentally and morally 
 from any of the Old World stock. And he 1s 
 not merely different but physically bigger, 
 more efficient, of a higher order. If you ask 
 how, or under what conditions this transforma- 
 tion takes place, the answer is that it is the in- 
 evitable result of life in America, and that time 
 will affect the change in any normal family of 
 immigrants. The new “American” has been 
 defined as any person whose ancestors on both 
 sides were born in America for at least two 
 generations, or whose parents and four grand- 
 parents were all native-born. You will each 
 recognize that you all “belong’”’. 
 
 When your first immigrant, George Scholtz, 
 came in 1731 to spy out the promised land, 
 the new Eden of Pennsylvania, he found not 
 a new nation but a queer jumble of scattered 
 racial groups. The English were the most 
 numerous but even here there were many 
 
 Scotch, Scotch-Irish, Irish and Welsh. ‘There 
 
 5 
 
were settiements of Spanish, French, Dutch, 
 Swedes and Germans. There were various 
 physical types, from the light-haired, tall, long- 
 headed north-European to the round-headed, 
 brown-eyed, dark-haired Gauls or the still 
 darker Mediterranean type. Scholtz could 
 scarcely have seen in America any promises of 
 a unified people and a new democracy. He 
 must have thought of the New World as a stage 
 where each race, if only it could hold itself 
 apart and separate, might hope for mastery 
 and dominion over some part of the continent. 
 Yet hardly had your second little group of 
 fourteen arrived in 1733 and your forty-nine 
 families completed their great migration 1734- 
 1737 and found new homes and friends among 
 the Moravians and Quakers, when Old Eng- 
 land was startled by the defiance, not of English 
 or European colonists in the new world, but by 
 a new nation and race of Americans. The 
 little nationalistic groups had established con- 
 tacts and friendships, old-world social distinc- 
 tions had been forgotten, there was a common 
 language in use, and men and women began to 
 feel new communities of interest and habit. 
 Inter-marriages were common, and from the 
 
 6 
 
American Revolution sprang a new united 
 people—The American Nation. 
 
 It has seemed to me that it might be worth 
 while to inquire what part you have played and 
 are playing in this forming of a new nation, a 
 new and better civilization. I could not pre- 
 sume, 1n my ignorance, to compete with your 
 long line of native historians, who for nearly 
 two hundred years have recounted each year 
 on the day of remembrance, the history of your 
 transplanting from old-world tyranny to new- 
 world freedom. I have sought in this address to 
 become the interpreter of the faith that burned 
 so brightly and so nobly inthe villages of Silesia, 
 Bethelsdorf and Gorlitz, in Saxony, and on the 
 frontier of Penn’s colony in contact with the 
 Indians, whose raids and massacres your fore- 
 fathers found less ferocious than the persecution 
 trom which they had fled. I could tell vou little 
 of vour great founder, Kaspar Schwenkfeld, 
 that is not as familiar as an oft-told tale. I can 
 only pay in passing my tribute of respect and 
 admiration to him as a profound thinker, a dili- 
 gent author, a man after the true pattern of his 
 Master, Jesus, a Saint of Saints, who for truth’s 
 sake suffered iniquity gladly, endured pain and 
 
 7 
 
persecution, and uttered no reproach. Huis 
 cause is the cause of us all—religious liberty,— 
 toleration,—brotherhood. He stands among 
 the foremost of that handful of men who could 
 not to be tortured or maneuvered into any ex- 
 pression of hate, scorn or unfriendliness for 
 any fellow-man,—even his persecutors. 
 
 In the days of the great debate between 
 Luther, Zwineli, John Huss and Melanchthon; 
 and Rome, Kaspar Schwenkfeld played an 1m- 
 portant part. It is not easy to measure accu- 
 rately the greatness of his influence, but it is a 
 fair inference that the violence of his perse- 
 cutors 1s the measure of the potency of his sweet 
 reasonableness. He founded no church, he 
 never posed as a priest or churchman, he hoped | 
 for a community of good men and women living 
 daily the life of the great teacher, Jesus. 
 
 To an impartial observer like myself, you 
 Schwenkfeldians are of intriguing interest. 
 You are, in the biblical sense, a peculiar people. 
 You fulfil the parable of the mustard seed, for 
 your ancestors were one of the smallest of the 
 well defined immigrant groups, and you have 
 become in two centuries as numerous almost as 
 the sands of the sea. You were the first fruits 
 
 8 
 
of the Protestant Reformation in Silesia but the 
 ceaseless persecution that was your birthright 
 kept you few in numbers and dispersed and 
 hidden in various villages. 
 
 Transplanted to America, we have the same 
 little community, again somewhat scattered by 
 lack of convenient farm lands, speaking the 
 old-world language, living, as far as might be, 
 the old-world life. Each. family was at once a 
 school, a business and a church. The educa- 
 tion of the children, reading of the Scriptures 
 and religious books, the singing of the familiar 
 old Schwenkfelder hymns and the meetings to- 
 gether for the cultivation of the inner light 
 were as much a part of daily family life as sow- 
 ing, ploughing and harvesting. ‘The new com- 
 munity prospered and increased in numbers. 
 Asa religious body it has never been numerous. 
 The inner circle of the faithful has been too 
 true to the non-proselyting spirit of the great 
 founder to seek churchly. power or glory. And 
 for this faithfulness it has paid the inevitable 
 price, for the living descendants of the original 
 exiles vastly outnumber the adherents of the 
 Schwenkfelder cult. The meaning of this fact 
 is significant of the process of American- 
 
 2 
 
ization, or the building of the new American 
 race and the new American civilization, for it 
 means that you have given richly of the best of 
 your blood, arts and ideals to the country of 
 your adoption. Some measure of the gift you 
 have made can be drawn from that important 
 chronicle of your history in America, the 
 “Genealogical Record of the Schwenkfelder 
 families”. I find there confirmation of the 
 statement of your historian, Howard Wiegner 
 Kriebel that: | 
 “Descendants were and are found in all 
 walks of life—some even having done time in 
 prison cells. An attempt indeed was made at 
 collating a list of prominent descendants, with 
 a view of inserting the same in this history 
 but for a variety of reasons this had to be 
 abandoned. ‘The classification of the skilled 
 professions pursued by these would show 
 eminent lights in callings like the following: 
 Artisans, artists, authors, doctors, editors, in- 
 ventors, judges, governor, lawyers, legislators, 
 ministers, missionaries, manufacturers, musi- 
 clans, merchants, presiding elders, bishops, 
 president and professors of theological semi- 
 naries, professors in colleges and seminaries, 
 
 10 
 
teachers, soldiers both in the ranks and as 
 officers.” | 
 
 Schwenkfeld literature was extensive and 1n- 
 teresting. It is reproduced for the most part 
 in manuscript in huge folios, written often 
 upon paper made at the Rittenhouse paper 
 mill, on the Wissahickon, the earliest in Amer- 
 ica. These volumes sometimes contained 1,000 
 pages, bound in stamped leather with brass 
 corners and brass mounting. Among the 
 notable facts connected with their history 1s 
 that they prepared here a written description of 
 all the writings of Schwenkfeld and their other 
 authors, and it is, as far as I know, the first at- 
 tempt at a bibliography in this country. 
 
 I have alluded to the first service of thanks- 
 giving. Where this service was held does 
 not appear to be recorded. The Court House 
 then stood at the present Second and Market 
 Streets. . [hey may have met in ‘the Friends’ 
 Meeting House close by, in one of the other 
 churches or perchance in the woods only a 
 short distance above Market Street. Philadel- 
 phia, then only fifty years old, had perhaps 
 13,000 inhabitants with farms, fields and woods 
 reaching practically down as far as the present 
 
 11 
 
Vine Street, most of the 1,500 houses being 
 south of High Street as Market was then called. 
 Concerning this day of prayer, or Gedachtniss- 
 Tag as it was commonly called, Hon. 8. W. 
 Pennypacker wellsays: “There were many sects 
 which were driven to America by religious 
 persecutions, but of them all the Schwenk- 
 felders are the only one which established 
 and since steadily maintained a Memorial Day 
 to commemorate Is deliverance and give thanks 
 to the Lord for it.’ 
 
 Small gifts are often best, and Mawes Week 
 is so lately with us that I recall first among the 
 achievements of your agriculturists the produc- 
 tion of the Wagner apple, succulent within as 
 it is beauteous in its autumnal appeal. ‘Iwo 
 states share this honor, for if Pennsylvania 
 produced Squire Abraham Wagener, New 
 York State adopted him and owes to him the 
 founding of Penn Yan and the planting of the 
 famous old parent Wagener apple tree whose 
 descendants still uphold throughout the land 
 the virtues of the Schwenkfelder stock. While 
 speaking of agriculture, the most common oc- 
 cupation of your forefathers, may I mention 
 the inventive and scientific genius of many of 
 
 12 
 
the families, that ranged from sun dials to or- 
 gans and implements in the Krauss family and 
 from clocks and cash registers to grain thresh- 
 ers in the Hubner family. Many are your 
 eminent physicians and teachers of medicine, 
 for healing of the body has ever been akin to 
 the healing of the soul. Of many I shall men- 
 tion only two, Dr. John L. Masters, Clinical 
 Professor of Otology at Indiana University 
 School of Medicine, and Dr. James M. Anders, 
 eminent professor of medicine in the Univer- 
 sity of Pennsylvania medical school, officer of 
 the French Academy, author and founder of 
 Oumannuale blealth= Day *. 
 
 You have made rich contributions to Amer- 
 ican © music; sacred, mulitary and secular. 
 George Weiss, author of 178 hymns, died in 
 Pennsylvania. Balzer Hoffman was also a 
 hymn writer, and his son Christopher Hoffman 
 gathered together your best sacred music in a 
 manuscript hymn book of 1760. Governor 
 Pennypacker describes the volume in the fol- 
 lowing words: “This hymn book, which may 
 be said to represent the art of the Middle Ages, 
 extended into the 18th century and across the 
 Atlantic—is the best specimen of their manu- 
 
 13 
 
scripts known. It was written between 1758 and 
 1760 in Pennsylvania and was bound here and 
 the clasps and mountings were made here. 
 Christopher Hoffman came to Pennsylvania at 
 six years of age so that his art was learned here. 
 It is, except as to literature, purely a Pennsy]- 
 vania product.” Christopher .Schultz had 
 printed the first American Schwenkfelder 
 hymn book in 1762. American hymn writers 
 include beside George Weiss and Balzer Hoff- 
 man, David Seibt, Gaspar and Christopher 
 Kribel, Abraham Wagener, Christopher 
 Schultz and George Meschter. ‘The racial gift 
 of music has found expression in other forms. 
 Many of the great military bands of the civil 
 and world war periods were composed wholly 
 or partly of Schwenkfeldians. Some of us have 
 heard the unrivaled music of the great band 
 master, Horace R. Anders. | 
 
 But it 1s in the field of public and social 
 service that I note particularly the spirit of 
 your community. Henry J. Stager com- 
 memorated both the glory of General Wash- 
 ington and your share in the Revolution when 
 he brought about the establishment of Valley 
 Forge park. You have given two Superin- | 
 
 14 
 
tendents of Public Instruction to Porto Rico, 
 George C. Groff, Professor and acting presi- 
 dent of Bucknell University, and Hon. Martin 
 G. Brumbaugh, late Governor of Pennsylva- 
 nia. David D. Wagener was a Congressman 
 to the 23d, 24th, 25th and 26th Congresses. 
 Among the Justices of Courts of Pennsylvania, 
 I find the names of Honorable Christopher 
 Heydrich and my friend, Judge William W. 
 Porter, Vice President of this Society, whose 
 only too affectionate regard has obtained for 
 me the invitation to be your guest. 
 
 To America in the dark days of the Civil 
 War you gave a great financier, William G. 
 Deshler, confidential agent and advisor of the 
 Secretary of the ‘Treasury, and a great soldier, 
 Major-General John F. Hartranft, twice elected 
 Governor of Pennsylvania. 
 
 Schwenkfeld’s literary style is rather loose 
 and hard to understand at times, because he 
 rejects the usual theological terms and uses 
 familiar biblical words in a sense peculiar to 
 himself—z. e., in a mystical sense. But of all 
 the dissenters of the Reformation, he is the most 
 systematic in the presentation of his views. 
 
 15 
 
Stating his doctrines in general, and broadly 
 speaking, they are a renewal of German mysti- 
 cism, under the influence of the new theological 
 formulas of his age, and deal specially with the 
 question of the person of Christ, as this ques- 
 tion came up for discussion in the various 
 churches of the time, in connection with the 
 diverse views of the Lord’s Supper. 
 
 Schwenkfeld often refers to the four chief 
 church parties of his time, with no one of which 
 he could be satisfied: — 
 
 (1) The Lutherans—He felt that Luther’s 
 doctrine of justification by faith alone was a 
 one-sided affair and led men to sin “that grace 
 might abound”. He criticized the Lutherans 
 for letting the state have so much to do with 
 church matters and for their mistaking the “‘his- 
 torical” for a “vital” faith in Christ. 
 
 (2) The Roman Catholics — Schwenkfeld 
 had become too thorough a Protestant ever to 
 become satisfied again with the Roman Catho- 
 lic Church, though as late as 1528 he said that 
 ‘Tf only Rome would grant freedom of con- — 
 science” he would sooner be a Roman Catholic 
 than a Lutheran. 
 
 16 
 
(3) The Anabaptists—(1. e., forerunners of 
 the later Baptists)—-He had much in common 
 with them and demanded toleration for them. 
 But he was opposed to their minute regulation 
 of the outward life of the Christian, their ex- 
 clusiveness, and their lack of what he regarded 
 as fundamental, namely a “spiritual knowledge 
 
 of the Word”’. 
 
 (4) The Zwinghans and Calvinists — 
 Schwenkfeld seldom names Calvin and prob- 
 ably knew little of the Genevan’s distinctive 
 doctrines, though their views have a marked 
 external resemblance. The chief difference 
 pertained to the nature of the Lord’s Supper 
 and the person of Christ. 
 
 It will be most convenient to sum up and 
 criticize his theology from the point of view of 
 the question that became the chief divider of 
 theological opinion in those days of contro- 
 versy, namely the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. 
 We begin with his conception of the sacraments 
 in general, as this will give up the presupposi- 
 tions of his whole system of theology. 
 
 Schwenkfeld disliked the term “means of 
 grace’. Asa mystic, he felt that salvation is 
 
 17 
 
not to be sought through any external things 
 whatsoever, but solely through the person of 
 Christ as Mediatot, who is the only ‘door’, 
 “means” or “way” through whom we can draw 
 nigh to God. He opposed all ceremonials as 
 in the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran 
 Churches. He therefore, like the Anabaptists, 
 also rejected baptism of infants as being a bit of 
 ceremonialism or magic, having no true spirit- 
 ual significance. The external church and her 
 sacraments as “means” were negligible. 
 
 He was thus dissatisfied with all four of the : 
 
 above parties because they made too much of 
 outward things, including even the letter of 
 Scripture as against its spirit. 
 
 His basal idea is that we must distinguish 
 between the Scripture and the Word of God; 
 the former is the letter, the latter ‘gives us the 
 real spirit of the revelation. ‘This 1s the starting 
 point of his mysticism: the difference between 
 the “outer” Scripture and the “inner” Word. 
 He felt that. Luther after 1522 was giving up 
 
 this distinction, and thus getting back to the | 
 medieval idea that the Bible as interpreted by © 
 the hierarchy was a sort of magical power. — 
 
 SI tre etree or pn RT 
 
 2 
 
 mercer vert rratinnen nant 
 
 And as a matter of fact it became the common | 
 
 18 
 
Lutheran conception that the Spirit of God 1s 
 bound to the Word and the Sacraments, so that 
 these themselves contain the supernatural grace 
 which saves the believer. Schwenkfeld says: 
 “He who has heard or read only the external 
 word (that is the letter of Scripture) and not 
 also the inner word (that 1s Christ speaking 
 through the Holy Spirit) has not heard the 
 Gospel of grace nor has he received or under- 
 stood it.” Thus corresponding to the inner 
 and outer word are two kinds of faith, two kinds 
 of knowledge of Christ, two kinds of Bible in- 
 terpretation—that of the letter and that of the 
 Spirit. Schwenkfeld is not a Quaker, looking 
 for an immediate revelation from “the inner 
 light”; the light he prizes is that given to the 
 reader of the Bible who gets hold of the inner 
 word and is not satisfied with the mere letter of 
 Scripture. True knowledge of Christ—that of 
 the Spirit—will therefore always harmonize 
 with the testimony of Scripture when it is prop- 
 erly, z. e., spiritually discerned. 
 
 Let us connect with this view of the word his 
 view of the sacraments. “For a complete sac- 
 rament,” he says, “two things are necessary, an 
 inner and spiritual element and an outer and 
 
 19 
 
bodily element.” To get any benefit from the 
 sacraments, therefore, faith. 1s necessary to 
 secure the inner content of the sacrament as 
 distinguished from the outer element. Exter- 
 nal baptism alone cannot wash away sins. And 
 so in the Supper: there are “two different kinds 
 of bread, or food, and drink: namely, a spirit- 
 ual, divine, heavenly bread, food, and drink, 
 which is the body of Christ given for us, and his 
 sacred blood shed for the forgiveness of sins: 
 and a bodily and sacramental bread and drink, 
 which the Lord Jesus before his departure com- 
 manded his disciples to break, to eat, and to; 
 drink, in remembrance of him.” The former! 
 is the bread which zs the Lord; the latter 1s only 
 bread of the Lord. 
 
 The sacraments are signs of spiritual reali- 
 ties, but unless there 1s genuine, spiritual, as dis- 
 tinguished from a mere historical, faith, there 
 is no benefit whatever from the sacraments, ex- 
 cept in so far as they point to their real spiritual 
 meaning. Here we see how closely Schwenk- 
 feld resembles Calvin in his doctrine of the 
 sacraments and faith. Both, as against the 
 Roman Catholics and Lutherans, emphasize 
 the possibility and reality of the direct operation 
 
 20 
 
of God upon the believer’s heart. ‘They further 
 agreed in making the whole Christ the content 
 of the sacraments, and in making the work of 
 the spirit a distinguishing feature of the “means 
 of grace”. Both, too, affirmed the spirituality 
 of the whole process of salvation and main- 
 tained that there is no grace in the sacraments 
 ywhich the\believer cannot get without them. 
 é Calvin’s superiority lay chiefly in his much 
 ‘clearer and .more Scriptural idea of faith as 
 conviction founded on testimony and enriched 
 with a personal trust, while Schwenkfeld made 
 faith a kind of mystical substance uniting the 
 believer with the substance of ee 
 We come to the heart of the whole matter 
 when we raise the question that led to the most 
 bitter controversy of all—How is Christ pres- 
 ent at the sacrament oftheSupper? Thisbrings 
 us to Schwenkfeld’s idea of the person of Christ, 
 his most marked theological peculiarity. 
 Christ, he says, being conceived by the Holy 
 Ghost, belongs to the order, not of “created”, 
 but of “begotten” beings. ‘Truly divine as the 
 eternal Son of God, he was born of the Virgin 
 Mary, specially sanctified for the purpose, so 
 that his flesh is different from all human flesh. 
 
 2] 
 
It had a different origin and has different 
 capacities. {He thus virtually denies that Christ 
 is consubstantial with man, though he concedes 
 that he is consubstantial with God) In a word 
 
 | his mysticism here resolves into one of those 
 
 paradoxes that the history of mysticism so often 
 presents to us: the Savior’s Aumanity is in the 
 strictest and most absolute sense divine. In this 
 way he bridges the gap between man and God. 
 
 ‘His words are: “When I say that Christ’s flesh 
 
 is deified, that his flesh has become God, I mean 
 nothing else than that the human nature of 
 Christ has become altogether similar to the 
 divine nature in glory.” Here he is opposed to 
 all four of the parties named at the outset. He 
 conceives this deification of the flesh of Christ 
 as a gradual process, as the development of the 
 divine principle implanted in his mother by the 
 Holy Ghost. By way of criticism we must say 
 that either the one or the other of these two 
 familiar words “flesh” and ‘divinity’? must 
 mean something other than the meaning ordi- 
 narily connected with them ; or else we have 
 an unwarranted equation, namely: humanity 
 equals divinity. 
 
On the surface, this Christology of Schwenk- 
 feld’s seems to be close to Luther’s; for Luther 
 taught that Christ’s human body was ubiqu1- 
 tous, so that it can be corporeally present wher- 
 ever the Lord’s Supper is being observed. - 
 Luther, therefore, also seems to give the hu- 
 manity of the ascended Lord the property of a 
 virtual omnipresence, so that the body can do 
 what really only a divine person can do—be in 
 more places than one at the ~<ame time. But 
 while Luther in his later years—after the con-- 
 troversv on the Supper had run its course— | 
 taught the presence of the body of Christ in the 
 Supper in such a sense that it “can be distrib- 
 tices catcn sand: masticated by ithe’ teeth’ 
 
 <\Schwenkfeld insisted that the Lutheran doc- 
 trine is contrary (1) to the content of Scripture; ‘ 
 (2) to the nature of the true Word (as dis- 
 tinguished from the letter of the Scripture) ; 
 (3) to the priesthood of Christ; (4) to the char- 
 acter of genuine faith; (5) to the honor and 
 olory of God; and: (6) to the institution of the 
 Supper and the faith of the early Church. 
 
 In reality Schwenkfeld’s view of the Supper 
 is much nearer to Calvin’s, namely in these re- 
 spects: the consecration of the elements means 
 
 
 
 Ree 
 
blessing them to a holy use, but not transub- 
 stantiating them (asthe Roman Catholic 
 Church held) or uniting ‘with, in, and under 
 them” the body of Christ (as Luther held); 
 ' the elements represent a spiritual, heavenly 
 reality, which faith can appropriate without 
 the sacrament if need be; and lastly that the 
 real benefit of the sacrament is the appropria- 
 tion of the benefits of Christ’s sacrificial death. 
 Calvin and Schwenkfeld differed in their in- 
 terpretation of the words of institution. Cal- 
 vin taught that the elements are symbols. of 
 the broken body and shed blood of Christ, 
 and that the sacrament is effectual only to 
 faith—the faith that knows and trusts itself 
 to the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice, faith 
 being an intellectual and volitional act of the 
 
 recipient soul~But Schwenkfeld held that! 
 
 when Christ spoke the words of institution, he | 
 
 t 
 
 really meant: “My body is this, namely, bread i 
 
 \ 
 
 or true nourishment for the soul; my blood is 
 this, namely, drink or true refreshment for the 
 soul.” Schwenkfeld makes the “is”, in the 
 clause “This is my body’’, a literal term, and 
 puts the figurative or spiritual sense in the pro- 
 noun “this”, which he calls a spiritual demon- 
 
 24 
 
 tf 
 
strative. Theologically Schwenkfeld’s view 
 may be said to be higher than Zwingli’s, which 
 put the emphasis chiefly on the symbolic char- 
 acter of the elements, whereas Schwenkfeld 
 puts it on the spiritual content of the elements 
 after they have been consecrated. / Here, too, | 
 he is most nearly allied to Calvin. Both insisted 
 that the sacrament makes a real offer to the com- 
 municant, not merely of the body and blood of 
 Christ, but also of his whole person and his sav- 
 ing work.) For both faith is of prime signifi- 
 cance, whereas for the Roman Catholic view 
 of transubstantiation the sacrament can work 
 without personal faith on the part of the reci- 
 pient, and whereas both the Roman Catholic 
 and the Lutheran views taught the real cor- 
 poreal presence in such a sense that even the 
 unworthy and the unbelieving can partake of 
 the body and blood of Christ. Both Calvin 
 and Schwenkfeld made much of the glorified 
 humanity of Christ, but with this difference, 
 that Calvin insists that the humanity, though 
 now glorified, is human, not, as Schwenkfeld 
 taught, deified. The main difference between 
 Calvin and Schwenkfeld, however, was in the 
 conception of faith. Faith with Schwenkfeld 
 
 25 
 
' was itself a mystical thing, a kind of coming of 
 the divine Word into the soul of the believer, 
 whereas with Calvin faith is a moral (intellec- 
 tual and volitional) act by which a man per- 
 sonally appropriates the benefits of the Gospel. 
 <As nearly as one can reproduce Schwenkfeld’s 
 idea of faith, it seems to have been an implant- 
 ing into the soul of the very essence of God. 
 That is how he bridges the gap between man 
 and God: it is the favorite way of the mystic— 
 making the substance of God come into the soul 
 of man.) 
 To sum up, Schwenkfeld taught that faith is 
 a communication of the very nature or essence 
 of God to men; justification is not a mere foren- 
 sic act whereby God declares the’ believer 
 righteous on account of the imputed righteous- 
 ness of Christ, but an internal making right- 
 eous of the believer; that Christ’s manhood 
 does not come from the “‘creaturely” world, but 
 is flesh sanctified by Mary’s regeneration, and 
 thus made capable, unlike our humanity, of a 
 _ progressive deification; and hence no mere ex- 
 ternals in religion, whether priesthood, Church, 
 sacraments, or the letter of the Bible can take 
 
 26 
 
 ) 
 
the place of the inner, spiritual Word, which is 
 the deified humanity of the Mediator. 
 
 One cannot study the life and character of 
 Schwenkfeld without one’s mind reverting to 
 that great saint and sage, Saint Francis of 
 Assisi, who made his. eternal impress on the 
 world three hundred years before, and the seven 
 hundredth anniversary of whose death is now 
 being commemorated’ througHout the world, 
 not only by the members of the Cathvlic church, 
 but by all who admire sincerity of faith and life. 
 He too came of an aristocratic family and had 
 infinite prospects of worldly advancement, and 
 he too left all for Christ. While he was at the 
 opposite ends of the poles from Schwenkfeld 
 in many respects, including the matter of an 
 organized church and the sacraments and the 
 supremacy of the Eicly Father an) Rome; 
 Schwenkfeld’s views on the believer’s relation 
 to Christ were strangely reminiscent of St. 
 Francis. All of you will recall Giotto’s famous 
 painting in ve Church of Santa Croce, Flor- 
 ence, called “Bidding Farewell to His Father”, . 
 picturing the renunciation of his inheritance 
 from his father by St. Francis. It would not re- 
 quire a great effort of the imagination to think 
 
 Zh 
 
of it as a picture of Schwenkfeld giving up the 
 world and devoting himself to the religious life. 
 Ruskin, in his “Mornings in Florence”, 
 speaking of the Saint’s renunciation, said: 
 “Unless this hardest of deeds be done first—this 
 inheritance of the world and mammon be cast 
 away—all other deeds are useless. You can 
 not serve, can not obey Godand Mammon. No 
 charities, no obedience, no self-denials, are of 
 any use while you are still at heart in conform- 
 ity with the world”. ‘The youthful Kaspar 
 might have used the language which St. Francis 
 used when he said to his father: “Until now, 
 I have called you my father, but now I can truly 
 say: ‘Our Father who art in heaven’, for He is 
 my wealth, and in Him do I place my hope.” 
 One could imagine had the two lived at the 
 same time a conversation between them in 
 which each absorbed in the love of his Master 
 would push aside all minor points of difference. 
 We have no evidence that Schwenkfeld was 
 especially influenced by St. Francis, but his 
 close and intimate relations to Luther in the 
 early part of his career would make it highly 
 probable that anything which affected Luther 
 in regard to St. Francis would have had the 
 
 28 
 
same influence upon Schwenkfeld, and Luther 
 in his “Table Talk” mentioned that St. Francis 
 was a just and honest man. While meditating 
 in the monastery Luther was deeply impressed 
 by the mystics, and said that on the eve of the 
 Nativity he imagined that he heard the singing 
 of the angelic choir of the annunciation to the 
 shepherds. Koestlin, who has written the stand- 
 ard life of Luther, states that Tauler’s German 
 Theology came to his knowledge; ‘‘Now for the 
 first time and in the person of their noblest 
 representatives, he was confronted with the 
 Christian and theological views of the German 
 mysticism of the Middle Ages’. And he was 
 so favorably impressed that he published a new 
 edition of it with an approving introduction. 
 And Prof. Kurtz, in his church history says: 
 ‘Tuther was powerfully influenced by ‘Tauler’s 
 mysticism”. Speaking of Schwenkfeld, he 
 says: ‘‘Besides the true evangelican mysticism 
 within the church, which Luther his whole life 
 esteemed very highly as a deepening of the re- 
 ligious life, which the Lutheran church had 
 never ruled out of its pale, an unevangelican 
 mysticism broke out at quite an early period. 
 In the case of Schwenkfeld this tendency occu- 
 
 29 
 
pied an advantageous position as well from the 
 attitude which it aroused to theology as from the 
 quiet and sober manner in which it conducted 
 its propaganda.” In this study of Schwenk- 
 feld, there is a temptation to diverge into a con- 
 sideration of the lives and works of the great 
 German mystics as Eckhardt, ‘Tauler, Bohme, 
 Arndt, Swedenborg, for while they under- 
 valued the outward means of grace they did 
 seek to dwell in the secret presence of God and 
 in their spiritual experiences they often beheld 
 the “light that never was on sea or land”. 
 
 And so I have fulfilled my pleasant duty of 
 addressing you on this occasion. Your ances- 
 tors, like the Hebrews of old, when they arrived 
 at the wild and difficult territory, which we 
 now enjoy, must have been tempted to recur to 
 the words of the Psalmist: “By the rivers of 
 Babylon there we sat down, yea we wept when 
 we remembered Zion * * * we hanged our 
 harps upon the willows * * * how can we 
 sing the Lord’s song in a strange land”. But 
 like the sturdy men they were, they buckled 
 down to the realities of a frontier life and made 
 for themselves a name and left a glorious: heri- — 
 
 30 
 
tage of fine Godfearing people, who are repre- 
 sented here to-night. 
 
 I would not venture to engage in a personal 
 lecture to so eminent and respected a body, but 
 I ask you, and ask myself, what does all this 
 mean to us? Does it give us any impetus in 
 the direction of a more exalted spiritual life? 
 Perhaps the hereditary mystic strain which runs 
 through your veins may tend to assist you in 
 an effort, even in these non-mystical days, to 
 behold with a clearer view the King in His 
 beauty. 
 
 1 
 
The Evening Post Job Priniing Office, inc., 
 154 Fulton St., New York, N. Y. 
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