YALE
DIVINITY SCHOOL
LIBRARY

Gift of
ROLAND H. BAINTON

Schwenckfelds Participation in
the Eucharistic Controversy
of the Sixteenth
Century

BY
FREDERICK WILLIAM LOETSCHER

A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty
of Princeton University for
the Degree of Doctor
of Philosophy

PHILADELPHIA :
MacCALLA & COMPANY

PEEFACE.
The dissenters of the Reformation in Germany, no less than in
the' other countries of Europe, had to wait a long time before the
first attempts were made to accord them anything like a fair or
adequate historical treatment. The political or secular historian
lacked the desire and the fitness to do justice to the numerous
religious sects in that age of bitter theological controversies, while
at least the earliest of modern ecclesiastical historians betrayed a
narrow confessional interest which was not only blind to many a
virtue in the nobler heretics, but also quite incapable of estimating
the salutary influence of some of the heresies themselves. It was
not till the middle of the last century, therefore, that the first
really meritorious efforts were made to study the so-called fanatics
and sectarians of this period with the sober spirit of scientific
investigation. It is especially to be regretted that so little attention had been
paid to the life and work of Caspar Schwenckfeld. To be sure,
Arnold in his Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie and Salig
r in his Historie der Augspurgischen Confession had succeeded to
^ some extent in securing a more correct estimate of the much mis-
- understood reformer. But it still remains true, that when we regard
i\*his strong and beautiful character, his native ability and his ac-
r£ quired powers, the amount as well as the originality and sugges-
-5 tiveness of his literary output, the extent of his intercourse with
j2 the leading spirits of his age and his influence upon them, or the
<x nature of his achievement as a polemic theologian and the founder
i. of a sect which, though small, has added to the lustre of his name,
wwe cannot but feel that here is ' 'a man who, in spite of his eminent
J^ significance for the history of the Reformation, has not as yet met
Fwith a proper appreciation."*
^ The following dissertation, which is substantially a reprint from
^The Princeton Theological Review of this year,f endeavors to set
i forth Schwenckf eld's peculiar theory of the eucharist as related
, both to the teachings of his opponents and to his own system of
,9 theological speculations.
C; * Gerbert, Geschichte der Strassburger Sectenbewegung zur Zeit der Reformation,
~^> 1889, p. 132.
*! fSee the July and October numbers of tbe Review, pp. 352-386, 454-500,
iii

IV

fhe difficulties of the task are due chiefly to the character of
Schwenckfeld's works. His most important treatises, no less than
his letters, are purely occasional writings, composed, at least in
some instances, with incredible speed. The style is loose, repeti
tious, often Luther-like in its bold and energetic one-sidednesses,
unconventional and inconsistent in theological terminology, and
therefore often strangely confusing alike to his contemporaries and
to modern interpreters, the uncertainty of the language being only
increased by the desire of this deeply spiritual reformer to express
his thoughts and feelings as much as possible in the very words of
Scripture. Profoundly interested in the religious questions of the
day, but never overcoming the layman's lack of training in theo
logical science, he never, it must be confessed, succeeded, in spite
of his undoubted dialectic gifts and his extensive acquaintance
with the Bible and the greatest of the Church fathers, in bringing
all the elements of his thought into a perfectly harmonious system.
These considerations, and above all his spiritualistic tendency,
which in large part explains these phenomena, will serve as an
apology, if one were needed, for the somewhat numerous quotations
from the sources : a mystic must be allowed to speak his own dialect.
It is at least hoped that these citations, selected from the great
mass of possible references, are such characteristic utterances that
they can fairly be regarded as furnishing an accurate and complete
conception of Schwenckfeld's theory of the Supper.
I take this opportunity of acknowledging my indebtedness to
Charles S. Thayer, Ph.D., Librarian of Hartford Theological Semi
nary, for the loan of some of the sources, and especially to Prof.
H. W. Kriebel, author of The Schwenckfelders in Pennsylvania,
who kindly placed at my disposal his valuable collection of
Schwenckfeldiana. Helpful suggestions concerning the treatment of
the theme were received from the Rev. C. D. Hartranft, D.D., the
editor-in-chief of the Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum, now appearing,
as well as from Dr. Joh. Ficker, Professor of Church History at
Strassburg in Alsace.
Princeton-, N. J., F. W. L.
October, 1906.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. I. SOURCES.
Schwenckfeld's works have never been published in full. Four folio volumes
appearing shortly after his death contain his most important literary remains.
They bear the following titles:
(A) Epistolar Des Edlen von Gott hochbegnadeten theuwren Manns' Caspar
Schwenckfeldts von Ossing, seliger gedachtnis, Christliche Lehrliaffte Missiven
oder Sendbrieff, die er in zeit seines Lebens vom XXV. Jare bis auff das LV.
 geschrieben, etc., etc. Der erste Theil. 1566. Pp. XXVII
880. Referred to in the text by the symbol A.
(B) Epistolar des Edlen von Gott hochbegnadeten Herren Caspar Schwenckfelds von
Ossing,  Christliche leerhaffte Sendbrieff e und schrifften die
er in Zeit seines lebens vom XXV. Jare an biss.auff das LXI 
geschrieben, etc. Der ander Theil, in vier Bucher underscheiden. 1570,
pp. 146 and 678.
This therefore is the first of the four books that were to have contained his
correspondence in regard to the four great parties in the Church of his day, the
Romanists, the Lutherans, the Zwinglians, and the Anabaptists. But the third
and fourth volumes never appeared. The pages of this volume bear the caption,
Sendbrieff von der Bepstischen Leere und Glauben. Cited as B.
(C) Das zweite Buch des andern theils des Epistolars. Darinn Herren Caspar
Schwenckfeldts Sendbrieffe begriffen, die er auf der Lutherischen Glauben,
Leere, Sacrament und Kirchen, zum theil an Lutherische, zum theil sonst an
gutherzige Personen geschrieben. 1570. Pp. 1022. Cited as C.
(D) Der Erste Theil Der Christlichen Orthodoxischen Bucher und schrifften des
Edlen, theuren. . . . Caspar Schwenckfeldts vom Hauss Ossing, etc., etc.
1564. Pp. 974. The other parts of this series never appeared. Cited
asZ>.
There are numerous smaller volumes containing additional treatises and letters,
as well as later editions of some of the works collected in the four folio volumes.
Of those to which I have had access the following writings, nearly all of
which are printed with other works, are the most important bearing upon the
subject in question:
Von der Speise des Ewigen Lebens. 1547.
Ein Schone und Herrliche Ausslegung ober das gantze sechste Kapitel Johannis,
von der Speise des Eurigen Lebens. 1595, but written in 1550.
Von den Wercken Christi und Wie die Evangelia nach dem geistlichen Sinn recht
verstanden sollen werden. Item, Vom ampt des H. Geistes in der christlichen
Kirchenn.
Ein Christlich Bedenken, Ob Judas unnd die unglaubigen falschen Christen den leib
und das blut Jesu Christe im Nachtmal des Herren empfangen, oder auch
noch heute empfahen oder niessen mbgen.
Antzaigung Zwayer Artickeln warumb dess Luthers Discipel furnemlich Herrn Cas
par Schwenckfelden und die Mitbekenner der glorien und rainen Leere dess
Euangelii Christi hassen, verfolgen, und falschlich beschrayen.

VI
Von der Gantzheit Christi, beede im Leiden und im seiner Herrlichkeit. 1593.
Ausslegung dess Euangelii Marci VIII. 1547.
Ausslegung dess Euangelii Luce XIIII. 1547.
Verantwortung und Defension fiir Casparn Schwenckfelden deren puncten unnd
Irrthumbe damit ihn Doctor Joachim von Wat . . . unrecht beschuldigt.
1542. 16mo, pp. 129.
Apologia: dass ist Verantwortung fiir Herrn Caspar Schwenckfelden und grundthche
Erklerung, dass er die Menschait Christi gar kains Wegs verlaucknet. 16mo,
pp. LXXXVII. (By some follower of Schwenckfeld.)
Ableinung D. Luthers Malediction, so erst durch Flacium Illyricum wider rnich im
truck ist publiciert warden. Item, Vom rechten grund und verstande dess H.
Sacraments des Herrn Nachtmals. 1555.
Apologia und Erclerung der Schlesier das sy den leyb und blut Christi im Nachtmal
dess Herrn und im gehaimnuss dess hailigen Sacraments nit verleugnen.
1529. (With other treatises.)
Ableynung und verantwortung der fiinfftzig Lugen oder Calumnien Flacii Illyria,
so er felschlich auss meinen Biichern gezogen, jiingst in Truck hat lassen
aussgehen. 1550.
Auffdeckhung des letsten schmach und grawliche Lugenbuchs so der grosse feind
Jhesu Christi des eynigen lebendigen Worts Gottes Flacius Illyricus Anno
1557 wider Herrn Casp. Schwenckfelden in Truck gegeben hat. 1558. (By
a follower.)
The less important works are cited in the appropriate places. As secondary
sources the works of the leading reformers who came into contact with
Schwenckfeld are to be consulted, especially those of Luther, Zwingh, and
Melanchthon. II. LITERATURE.
The oldest literature on Schwenckfeld, much of which is not readily accessible
in this country, is given with considerable fullness by Hoffmann in the work cited
in the following list. These works are partly biographical and partly doctrinal.
Arnold, Gottfried: Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie. Schaffhausen,
1740. Bd. I, Th. II, Buch XVI, c. XX, and Anhang, pp. 1246-1299.
Barclay, Robert: The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Common
wealth. London, 1879.
Baur, August: Zwinglis Theologie, Ihr Werden und Ihr System. Halle. Vol.
II, 1889.
Baur, F. C: Die christliche Lehre von der Versohnung in ihrer geschichtlichen
Entwicklung. Tubingen, 1838.
 Die christlich Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung Gottes in ihrer
geschichtlichen Entwicklung. Tubingen, 1841-1843.
 Zur Geschichte der protestantischen Mystik, in Theologische Jahrbucher,
1848, pp. 502-528.
Dollinger, J. : Die Reformation, ihre innere Entwicklung und ihre Wirkungen im
Umfange des Lutherischen Bekenntnisses. Vol. I, Arnheim 1853 pp
236-280. , .
/¦ Dorner, J. A.: Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi. Zweiter
Theil. Berlin, 1853. Pp. 624-636.
 Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie, besonders in Deutschland. Munchen
1867. Pp. 176-182.
Erbkam, H. W.: Geschichte der protestantischen Sekten im Zeitalter der Reforma
tion. Hamburg und Gotha, 1848. Pp. 357-475.
 Article, s. v., in Realencyklopadie fur protestantische Theologie und Kirche
Second Edition, Vol. XIII, 776 sqq.

VII
Erdmann: Article, s. v., in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Vol. XXXIII, pp.
403-412.
Erl&uterung fiir Herrn Caspar Schwenckfeld, und die Zugethanen seiner Lehre,
Sumnytaun, 1830. Composed and revised by Pennsylvania Schwenck-
f elders.
Gerbert, C. : Geschichte der Strassburger Sectenhewegung zur Zeit der Reformation
(1524-1534). Strassburg, 1889.
Goetz, Karl G.: Die Abendmahlsfrage in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung.
Ein Ver such ihrer Lbsung. Leipzig, 1904.
Grunhagen, C: Geschichte Schlesiens. Vol. II, Gotha, 1886.
Hagen, Karl: Deutschlands literarische und religiose Verhaltnisse im Reforma-
tionszeitalter. Vol. Ill, Frankfurt a. M., 1868.
Hahn, G. L.: Schwenckf eldii Sententia de Christi Persona et Opere exposita.
Vratislaviae, 1847.
Hampe, O.: Zur Biographie Kaspars v. Schwenckfeld. Jauer, 1882. (Prog.,
pp. 20.)
Hartranft, C. D. : Article, s. v., in S. M. Jackson's Concise Dictionary of Re
ligious Knowledge and Gazetteer. New York, 1891.
Hegler, Alfred: Geist und Schrift bei Sebastian Franck. Fine Studie zur
Geschichte des Spiritualismus in der Ref ormationszeit. Freiburg i. B., 1892.
Heyd: Blaurer, Schnepf, Schwenckfeld; in Tubinger Zeitschrift fiir Theologie,
1838, No. 4, pp. 28-48, for Schwenckfeld.
Hoffmann, Franz: Caspar Schwenckfelds Leben und Lehren. Erster Theil.
Berlin, 1897. (Prog., pp. 29.)
Kadelbach, Oswald : Ausfiihrliche Geschichte Kaspar v. Schwenkfelds und
der Schwenkj 'elder in Schlesien, der Ober-Lausitz und Amerika, nebst ihren
Glaubensschriften von 1524-1860. Lauban, 1860. Pp. 254.
Keim, Theodor: Reformationsblatter der Reichsstadt Esslingen. Esslingen, 1860.
 Die Reformation der Reichsstadt Ulm. Stuttgart, 1851.
Kriebel, H. W.: The Schwenckf elders in Pennsylvania. Lancaster, Pa., 1904.
(Chapter I.)
Noack, Ludwig: Die christliche Mystik nach ihrem geschichtlichen Entwicklungs-
gange im Mittelalter und in der neuern Zeit. Zweiter Theil. Konigsberg,
1853. Pp. 42-60.
Planck, G. J.: Geschichte der Entstehung, der Veranderungen und der Bildung
unseres protestantischen Lehrbegriffs. Funften Bandes erster Theil.
Leipzig, 1798. Pp. 75-250.
Rosenberg, Abraham G.: Schlesische Reformationsgeschichte. Breslau, 1767.
Schenkel, Daniel: Das Wesen des Protestantismus aus den Quellen des Reforma-
tionszeitalters dargestellt. Vols. I-III. Schaffhausen, 1846-51.
Salig, C. A.: Vollstandige Historie der Augspurgischen Confession und derselben
Apologie. Halle, 1730.
Schneider, A. F. H.: Ueber den geschichtlichen Verlauf der Reformation in Lieg
nitz. Abtheilung I. Berlin, 1860. Pp. 39.
Schneider, Daniel: Unpartheyisehe Prufung des Caspar Schwengfelds und
Grundliche Vertheydigung der Augspurgischen Confession. Giessen, 1708.
Schultz, Christoph: Compendium, das ist kurze Zusammenfassung und Inbegriff
der Christlichen Glaubens-Lehren, 1783. Philadelphia, 1836.
Schnurrer, Christian F.: Erlauterungen der Wiirtembergischen Kirchen-Refor-
mations- und Gelehrten-Geschichte. Tubingen, 1798.
Soffner, Johannes: Geschichte der Reformation in Schlesien. Breslau, 1887.
Walch, Johann Georg : Historische und Theologische Einleitung in die Re-
ligions-Streitigkeiten, welche sonderlich ausser der Evangelisch-Lutherischen
Kirche entstanden. Vierter und fiinfter Thiel. Jena, 1736. Pp. 1004-1024.

Vlll
Weiser, O Z.: Casper Schwenkfeld and the SchwenkfeUians, in The Mercersburg
Review, July, 1870.
Brief accounts of Schwenckfeld and of his doctrines may be found in the
Church Histories of Kurtz, Herzog, Henke-Gass, Mosheim, and especially
Neidner, Gieseler-and Moeller-Kawerau.
On the Eucharistic Controversy in general, see, besides the Doctrine Histories
of Harnack, Loofs, Seeberg, and Hagenbach, the following:
Ebrard, August: Das Dogma vom heiligen Abendmahl und seine Geschichte.
Vol. II, 1846.
Hodge, Charles: Princeton Review, April, 1848.
? Nevin, J. W. : Mercersburg Review, 1850.
Kahnis, Karl F. A.': Die Lehre vom Abendmahl. Leipzig, 1851.
Dieokhoff, A. W.: Die evangelische Abendmahlslehre im Reformationszeitalter
geschichtlich dargestellt. Vol. I. Gottingen, 1854.
Muller, Julius : Vergleichung der Lehren Luthers und Calvins vom heiligen
Abendmahl, in Dogmatische Abhandlungen, pp. 404ff. Bremen, 1870.
Krauth, Charles P.: The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology. Phila
delphia, 1872.
Schmid, Heinrich: Der Kampf der lutherischen Kirche um Luthers Lehre vom
Abendmahl, im Reformationszeitalter. Leipzig, 1873.
Van Dyke, Henry J.: The Presbyterian Review, 1887, pp. 193ff., 472ff.
Richard, J. W. : Bibliotheca Sacra, October, 1887, and January, 1888.

SCHWENCKFELD'S PARTICIPATION IN THE
EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY OF THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
fT^HE eucharistic controversies of the Reformation, like the
JL related Christological controversies of the ancient Church,
present, on the whole, a disheartening picture; one in which the
harsh uncharitableness, not to say the violent hatred, among
brethren professing devotion to a common Lord is too seldom
relieved by examples of heroic fidelity to religious convictions, com
bined with the conciliatory spirit of Christian love. In each case
the conflict was followed by momentous and in part disastrous
consequences in the spheres both of constructive theologizing and
of ecclesiastical and political life. In each case, however, the issues
involved must be said, when their full significance is realized, to
have been worth the arduous attempt made to settle them.
The Lord's Supper had, of course, been an important subject of
controversy in the Middle Ages.* But it was reserved for the
evangelical spirit of the sixteenth century not only to undermine
the dogma of transubstantiation sanctioned by the Fourth Lateran
Council of 1215, but also to bring into clearer prominence many a
hitherto neglected factor of the problem concerning the sacra
mental feast. The issue was far from being merely liturgical.f
The contest was so long and bitter just because it was rightly
understood that the most precious treasures of the rediscovered
* Loofs, however, in his article, "Abendmahl," in Hauck's RealenclyklopadieT
I, p. 65, is unduly anxious to maintain that, barring Carlstadt's theory, the "posi
tive thoughts of the Reformation period" concerning. the eucharist are "not-
new." The context, to be sure, restricts this generalization to more moderate-
bounds. Certainly so far as Schwenckfeld, for example, is concerned, Loofs''
statement can be applied only to the finally accepted symbolic doctrines of the
Supper. Cf. Goetz, Die Abendmahlsfrage in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung,
p. 75, n. 2.
t It is interesting to observe, however, as Harnack reminds us (Dogmenge
schichte, IIP, pp. 7 '46, 7 '62), that it is possible in a sense to construe Luther's whole
reformation as a "reformation of the public worship." Rome had made the
mass the very centre of her church service, and the work of the reformers in its
negative but at the same time its most direct bearings was an attack in the
name of subjective religion upon the citadel of the Romish liturgy.

Gospel were at stake. The mere statement of the controverted
points led thinking men to connect their views of the Supper with
the deepest verities of their faith. It lay in the nature of the case,
therefore, that sooner or later nearly every dogmatic problem of the
day would be related to the question which, above all others, was
beginning to divide the Protestants.
In ascertaining the nature and value of the contribution made
by any one of the reformers to the doctrine of the Lord's Supper it
is necessary, therefore, to consider his views both from the stand
point of the fundamental principles of his system of thought and
in the light of his historical surroundings. For to none of the con
testants did the eucharistic question appear as an end in itself, nor
could any one of them attempt the solution of the problem without
coming into conflict with various classes of opponents.
To these considerations special weight ought to be given in the
case of Caspar Schwenckfeld.* For on the one hand he belongs
to that class of theological writers who have had the mis
fortune of being seriously misunderstood because persistently
branded as " mystics, "f It is of course to be admitted that his
religious life revealed itself more in the language of strong and deep
feeling than in any clearly articulated system of dialectics. It is
likewise true, as Dorner % reminds us, that it must have been easy
for his contemporaries to represent his ideas as "only a perverse
lot of the most wondrous idiosyncrasies." Moreover, he shows
many points of contact and signs of kinship with some of the
extreme spiritualistic fanatics. But for this very reason it is
necessary to cast aside all prejudices and to lay hold of the inner
connections, if such can be found, among these alleged fantastic
* The spelling of the name is by no means uniform. Kriebel, The Schwenkfeld-
ers in Pennsylvania, p. 1, n. 1, cites thirteen variations, and others might be
added. Schneider gives some valid reasons in favor of the consonantal com
bination ck and a final d instead of dt or only t. See his tract, Ueber den geschicht
lichen Verlauf der Reformation in Liegnitz, etc., Abt. 1, p. 27 n. 10
t That the epithet in some sense may properly be applied to Schwenckfeld it
would be idle to deny. But what after all is mysticism? Inge, in his Bampton
Lectures (1899) on Christian Mysticism, ventures the assertion (p. 1) : "No word
in our language — not even 'Socialism' — has been employed more loosely than
'Mysticism,' " and in the Appendix he cites and criticises some twenty-six at
tempts by men of all schools of thought to define the term. With what propriety
we may speak of Schwenckfeld as a mystic will, we hope, become thoroughly
clear as we proceed. For the present it may be most advantageous to content
ourselves with the statement that the word may as a matter of fact have a good
as well as a bad sense.
{ Lehre von der Person Christi, p. 624.

and heterogeneous elements. Great credit is here due to Erbkam,*
whose treatment of Schwenckfeld is still, on the whole, the best;
and to Baur,t who with his usual critical acumen saw the possibility
and the need of doing Schwenckfeld a needed service by bringing
out more clearly the hidden speculative elements of his system.J
These and other writers have accustomed students of Schwenckfeld
to the double conviction, not only that his views have a coher
ence that makes them worthy of investigation, but that of all the
dissenting thinkers of the German Reformation he is the most
systematic . § Whatever estimate we may form of his ' ' mysticism, ' '
we shall expect to discover in him at least somewhat more of logic
and speculative strength than the traditional prejudices permitted
some of the earlier historical writers to find.||
Not only, however, does the alleged mystical character of
Schwenckfeld's theologizing necessitate our bringing his doctrine of
the Supper into the closest possible relation to his whole system, but
it is likewise more than ordinarily important, on the other hand,
* Geschichte der protestantischen Sekten, pp. 357-475.
t Die christliche Lehre von der Versohnung in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung
(1838) ; Die christi. Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, etc. (1843) ; Zur Geschichte der
prot. Mystik, in Theol. Jahrbttcher (1848).
X Baur of course had no intention of converting Schwenckfeld the mystic into
Schwenckfeld the rationalist, but the transformation, easy enough in itself and
doubtless most congenial to a mind like Baur's, may be said, in spite of the reten
tion of the word "mysticism," to have been fairly accomplished. After all it
is only a matter of taking Schwenckfeld's temperature at different times, now
catching him in the warmth of a fervent piety and now finding him on the chilly
heights of some abstract speculation. But though Baur (Theologische Jahr-
bucher, 1848, p. 527) professes to be able to distinguish the ' 'speculative content
of the ideas from the peculiar form in which they have found expression," he
can scarcely be acquitted of the charge of reading into Schwenckfeld some of his
own ideas as to how the reformer might have avoided apparent or real contradic
tions. Dorner (I.e., p. 625) gives a truer judgment: "Doch kann auch nicht
behauptet werden, dass er sich stets gleich blieb oder dass nicht unlosbare Wider-
spriiche in seinem System liegen."
§ Comp. Ficker, Handschriften des sechzehten Jahrhunderts, Kleine Ausgabe,
Tafel 27, p. 75: "Er ist unter den religiosen Subjectivisten der Systematiker:
sein mystischer Spiritualismus ist mit einem dogmatisehen System verbunden,
welches seine Ueberzeugungen geschlossener wirken lasst. ' '
|| See, e.g., Planck's capricious statement (Geschichte der Entstehung . . . .unseres
protestantischen Lehrbegriffs, Vol. V, Th. 1, p. 184): "Diess war wenigstens im
Ganzen die Wendung, welche die Ideen Schwenkfelds genommen, oder diess war
ungefahr die Form, in welcher sich seine Phantasie alles, was dabei fiir die Ver-
nunft undenkbar war, denkbar gemacht hatte. Es ist leicht moglich, dass sie
sich zu Zeiten in seinem Kopf auf eine etwas verschiedene Art zusammenfugten,
denn Vorstellungen, die keinen vernunftigen Zusammenhang zulassen, sind der
mannigfaltigsten Zusammensetzung f ahig. ' '

to interpret such views as his in the light of the historical situation
in which he found himself. This is so not only because of the un
usually extensive connections which he had with the most diverse
parties in the Church,* but more particularly because every mystical
movement in history is necessarily colored by the specific forms oi
religious deadness against which it rises to utter its protest.
Fortunately Schwenckfeld informs us with admirable fullness
concerning his relations to his contemporaries.! Born about 1490,J
of an ancient and aristocratic family in Ossig, near Liiben, in
Silesia, reared a strict Catholic, educated at Liegnitz, Cologne,
Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and at other but unknown institutions,
serving about twelve years at the courts of several Silesian princes,
this deeply religious young nobleman became one of the first in
that section of Germany to embrace the evangelical cause. § Com
pelled in 1521 by reason of an affection of the ear to return to
private life, he became a diligent student of the Scriptures.|| He
kept in touch with the leaders of the new movement, making several
trips to Wittenberg and exchanging letters with Luther himself.
Devoted heart and soul to the task of establishing the Reformation
in Silesia, he secured in 1523 the able cooperation of a former notary
and canon, Valentine Krautwald.
But irreconcilable differences soon arose between Schwenckfeld
and the Wittenbergers, resulting in 1527 in a complete and irre-
* In this fact lies the chief justification for Keller's assertion (Die Reformation
und die alteren Reformparteien, p. 463) : "Es ware von der hochsten Wichtigkeit,
die umfangreiche und interessante Correspondenz Schwenkfelds ans Licht zu
ziehen; man wtirde iiberraschende Resultate daraus gewinnen."
t But his works present only meagre details as to his early life. Hoffmann's
account, Caspar Schwenckfelds Leben und Lehren, I, extending to only 1524 and
constituting the first of six parts of what may become an adequate biography,
draws largely from other important sources. Keim and Gerbert present the
leading facts concerning Schwenckfeld's career in southern Germany. Hampe,
Zur Biographie Kaspars von Schwenckfeld, 1882, is minute but brief, extending
to 1539. Arnold, Salig, Planck, Dollinger, Erbkam, etc., give only the salient
biographical data.
J Neither the date of his birth (1489 or 1490) nor that of his death (1561 or
1562) has as yet been fixed.
§ The exact date of his conversion cannot be fixed. Hoffmann, p. 10, is inclined
to put it as early as 1517; Moller is at least safe in declaring that by 1519
Schwenckfeld had been won to the Lutheran cause (Kirchengeschichte, III, p. 444) %
|| Greek and Hebrew he seems to have acquired considerably later, certainly
not before 1528. Cf. Erbkam, I.e., p. 363, n. 1. Hase is clearly in error, how
ever, when he delares (Kirchengeschichte, III, 1, p. 300): "Noch in seinem 64.
Jahre lernte er Griechisch, um mit eigenen Augen zuzusehen, was Christus
geredet habe." Letters and treatises written long before this evince a consider
able knowledge of the Greek Testament and the Fathers.

mediable rupture. It is therefore worth while ascertaining, at the
very outset, the logic of this event, the real turning-point in his
career as a reformer.
He had prided himself upon being an ardent disciple of Luther,*
and though from the beginning he could not entirely agree with
him,f he never forgot the incalculable service the great reformer
had rendered to the cause of religion.! The force of sacred
convictions, however, proved stronger than this sense of grati
tude, deepened though it was by a. peculiar reverence for his
spiritual father. Schwenckfeld perceived that his whole concep
tion of Christianity differed so radically from Luther's that there
was no possibility of a substantial agreement^ The common
representation, not sufficiently modified even by Erbkam and Hahn,
that the divergencies of opinion related primarily and chiefly to the
eucharistic controversy opened by Carlstadt in 1524 fails, as Baur
has pointed out, || to look at the facts from the right angle. The
* C 300d (anno 1531): "Ich habe mich der Lutherischen Lehre erkundet und
seines Evangelii gebraucht mit moglichem Fleiss acht Jahre." Cf. C. 574c:
"Denn ich habe, ohne Ruhm zu reden, in Doctor Luthers Buchern wohl so viel
als Ihr studiert und (wollt mir's verzeihen) vielleicht ehe Ihr das a, b, c gelernt viel
seiner Schriften mit moglichem Fleiss hinten und vom gelesen, auch mit Gebet
nach der Regel Pauli omnia probate fieissig erforscht und bewaret."
f B 193b: "dass ich mit ihrem Evangelio nicht stimme, auch von Anfang nie
¦ganzlich gestimmt habe."
% Nothing more beautifully reveals Schwenckfeld's nobility of character than
the oft-repeated expressions of his grateful appreciation of Luther's world-
historical importance, even after the latter had coined the vulgar nickname
'Stenkfeld" and in other ways outdone himself in vituperative abuse. See
especially C 499 sq., 599d, D 4, 5, 6, 526, and C 701d, where he informs Luther
under date of October 12, 1543: "Denn ob ich wohl nicht in alien Puncten euch
kann unterschreiben, noch mit euch stimmen, so erkenne ich doch, dass ich euch
nach Gott und der Wahrheit alle Ehre, Liebe, und Gtite schuldig weil ich eures
Dienstes anfanglich mitgenossen, so wohl als ich Gott den Herrn fiir euch nach
meinem armen Vermogen zu bitten noch nicht habe unterlassen." Cf. C 745b
690d. § The influence on Schwenckfeld of the mystical Tauler and the German The
ology only ^widened the^guJf. Schwenckfeld (C 596a) speaks with admiration,
though not with unconditional approval, of his teacher Tauler. The fact is that
Schwenckfeld forsook Luther for Tauler, whereas Luther, in opposition to the
fanatical excesses of some of the spiritualists, felt it necessary more and more to
recede from Tauler and to check the subjective tendencies he had himself cham
pioned in the opening days of the Reformation. Even before the disturbances
at Wittenberg, however, Luther's mysticism began to decline. It must be said
to have reached its summit as early as 1518 or 1519. Cf. Hering, Die Mystik
Luthers, etc., p. 292 sq.
|| Theol. Jahrb., 1848, pp. 504-506; cf. also his Lehre von der Versohnung, p. 462.
For whatever fault may be found with Baur's one-sided emphasis on the specu
lative elements in Schwenckfeld at the expense of the strictly practical, that is

causes of the break must be distinguished from its mere occasion.
Prior to all questions about the nature of the Lord's presence in
the sacramental ordinance or about the constitution of his person
is the consideration of his very purpose or mission in the world.
Nothing less than the whole problem of the nature of salvation—
the question how the sinful soul may be reunited with God— was
Schwenckfeld's basal concern. He could not accept Luthers
explanation of the Supper, but this inability was only indicative of,
and conditioned by, his inability to accept without safeguarding
modifications the doctrine which his chief opponent came to regard
as the article of a standing or falling Church, justification by faith
alone. Implied in this, as we shall see, was a genetically different
view as to the Word, the Sacraments, and the Church, and like
wise as to the nature of the process of salvation itself.
Schwenckfeld, we repeat, was governed at the outset by thor
oughly practical considerations. He wanted the new presentation of
the Gospel to bring forth, in the lives of his fellow-men, an abundant
fruit unto holiness. He was deeply grieved by some of those epigram
matic but easily misunderstood half-truths with which Luther so
often sought to help his own and his partisans' faith. He feared,
and his experience more and more justified his fears, that Luther's
gospel was becoming popular at the expense, to some extent, of
sound morality* He deplored the lack of good works, the absence
of strict discipline, the interference of the avaricious princes in the
affairs of the Church, and the manifestly false security of many pro
fessed Christians the chief article of whose creed was that then-
organization was the only one worthy of comparison with that of
the Apostles. The Lutherans are often characterized, along with
the Romanists, as Antichrist, because, according to him, they have
no spiritual discernment, but mistake the letter for the spirit, a
historical for a vital faith in Christ.t
of the religious and moral as distinguished from the theological or philosophic
interests that dominated the reformer, there can be no doubt that in the main
his strictures upon Hahn and Erbkam are borne out by the facts.
* This does not mean, as the charge so often but falsely brought against
Luther's gospel maintains, that he furnished no adequate basis or motive for
ethical conduct. On the contrary, no one of the reformers better understood
either the need or the method of supplying morality with the motive power of a
deep religious faith. But his words not seldom seemed to mock his principles
and unfortunately his devoted followers were apt to swear by the caricature of
their leader rather than by his real self. Cf . Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, IIP,
p. 784, n. 1, and Seeberg, Dogmengeschichte, II, p. 244, n. 1.
t This charge has of course ever been a familiar expedient in the hands of spir-

The real nature and extent of the differences will become more
apparent as we proceed. Enough has been said to give point to
the present contention that the divergencies on the eucharistic
question were after all only symptomatic of those deeper differences
that concerned the very essence of the faith*
Unable as Schwenckfeld was to identify himself with the Luth
eran movement, he had become too thorough a Protestant to find
it possible to reenter the Roman Church. He is well aware, indeed,
that his works were at times better received by the Romanists
than by the Lutherans, t and in 1528 he even declares that if only
he could have freedom of conscience he would rather join the former
than the latter. J But the logic of his situation kept him true to
Protestantism. He rejected the hierarchy, the priesthood, the
mass, the confessional, and the ceremonialism of the Romish
Church, as well as all her dogmas that clashed with his distinctive
peculiarities. If the Lutherans made too much of the letter of
Scripture to the neglect of its spirit, the Romanists made too much
of meritorious works to the disparagement of genuine faith. Rome
gave too much scope to the mere traditions of men. In fine, he
was bound as a real Protestant to oppose Roman Catholicism.
Between Romanism and Lutheranism Schwenckfeld sought to
establish the "Reformation of the Middle Way." He declares:
"There are now in general two leading parties that misuse the
Gospel of Christ, inasmuch as the one departs in many particulars
itualistic heretics. For a well-selected list of passages from Schwenckfeld's works
concerning the undeniable ethical deficiences of the German Reformation, see
Dollinger, Die Reformation, I, pp. 257-280. The testimony of other writers,
there given, shows by contrast Schwenckfeld's fairness and moderation Luther
himself was as severe as any of the other censors (p. 295 sqq.).
* See, e.g., the Erkldrung etlicher streitiger Artikel beim Missbrauch des Evangeliii
etc., in D 375 sqq., where no one of the five "abused" articles explicitly refers
to the eucharist. Cf . also C, pp. 1009-1012, where in parallel columns Schwenck
feld compares and contrasts twelve cardinal articles of his faith with those of the
Lutherans, only two of the points dealing directly with the Supper and a
third indirectly. The high Lutheran Kurtz (Kirchengeschichte, 9. Aufl., 2. B.,
p. 150) therefore fails to do justice to Schwenckfeld when he declares: "Was
Schwenckfeld an der luth. Reformation so sehr zu wider, war nichts anders als ihre
feste biblisch-kirchliche Objectivitat. ' ' -Rather was it primarily the externalism
of Luther's movement that provoked his opposition and caused his deeply
spiritual nature to develop a radically different conception of Christianity. To
be sure, Schwenckfeld could not grasp Luther in his entirety, nor even do justice
to his doctrine of justification. On the other hand, it ought not to be forgotten
that Luther's words were peculiarly liable to misinterpretation.
t B 460ab.
J C 645d.

to the left, and the other to the right/ from the only straight and
true way of the Lord. The first party is that of the papacy, that
despises the Gospel- of Christ with his saving ministry, and will not
perceive the salutary grace of God that has been manifested nor
the clearer light of revealed truth, but abides and perseveres,
in doctrine and life, in its old errors."* "The other party con
sists of those whom God has in these days granted a gracious light,
in which they to a certain extent perceive what is right and Chris
tian, but who by no means live up to this light, although they wish
to be regarded as evangelical; indeed, they make the Gospel min
ister to their pride, greed, lust, and ambition, to their crimes and
misdeeds, to serve as a defense for their sinful living. These,
much as they pretend to be better and more evangelical than
others, are rather a dishonor, disgrace, and mocking-stock to the
evangelical truth and name, while they live unevangelically, without
the fear of God and without regard for man, in spite of all their
praise for the Gospel, "f
In many important respects, however, Schwenckfeld must be
conceived not as a mediator between Romanism and Lutheranism,
but as the spokesman of a more advanced reform movement. He
often speaks of the Anabaptists as a third party in the Church of his
day, and it cannot be doubted that there was an inner kinship
between him and them. He was in unmistakable sympathy with
their disciplinary zeal. He had come under the influence of
thj^n jspirituaj^tic Jndividualism, and heartily shared their ten
dency to make light of the sacraments. He early counseled the
abolition of infant baptism, or at least the reduction of the sacra
ment to a mere ' ' ecclesiastical baptism, " to be later reinforced by
the true baptism of the Spirit. During his many wanderings in
southern Germany he preferred to labor in fields that had been
visited by Anabaptists. So closely related, in fact, are the sub
jective tendencies of Schwenckfeld and these more radical leaders
that he has been regarded by some as a real adherent of this party. J
But he cannot justly be classified with the Anabaptists. He wanted
toleration for them, § but this was only in keeping with his advanced
* D 356d.
t D 360a. Cf. also p. 710c, on the right mean between the papacy and Luther
anism, and C 655d.
{Keller, e.g., says: "obwohl die ganze Welt wusste, dass Schwenkfeld im
Grunde ein Wiedertaufer war." See Die Reformation, etc., p. 463.
§ A 98, and compare the I^tinjetter to Bucer jmblished by Schneider, Ueber
den geschichtlicherTVerlauf der Reformation in Liegnitz, etc., Abt. I, Beilage III
p. 37.

ideas concerning the freedom of conscience in matters of religion*
He did, to be sure, confess: "The Anabaptists are for this reasoa
more to my liking, because they concern themselves somewhat
more than many of the learned for the divine truth, "f But he
declares explicitly that he is no adherent of this sect,f and. that he
will never become one.§ It is a fact, moreover, that the Ana
baptists themselves rejected his views and persecuted' him.|| He,
on the. other hand, was opposed to their pitiable legalism, their
ecclesiastical externalism and exclusiveness, and their lack of
" spiritual knowledge."^
Schwenckfeld commonly speaks, in the last place, of a fourth
Christian Church or sect of his day, the Zwinglians. From their
mediating position between the Romanists and Lutherans on the
one hand and the Anabaptists on the other, one might suppose that
the persecuted nobleman would have found some way of coming to
terms with this party. But here too the differences concerning
the eucharist were only of secondary importance.
At first, to be sure, the mediators of southern Germany, especially
Bucer, Capito, and Zell of Strassburg, cordially received him.** In
1524 CEcolampadius of Basel even ventured, in his contest with
the Wittenbergers, to publish, without the author's eonsent or
knowledge, a letter of Schwenckfeld's that contained some char
acteristic anti-Lutheran views. Zwingli afterwards did the same
with Schwenckfeld's first treatise— it was a letter to some Strassburg
friends — on the Lord's Supper. But however much the Silesian
might have in common with the Swiss as against Luther, there was
no possibility of agreeing in any positive view of the eucharist.
Schwenckfeld, moreover, took as much offense at Zwingli's as at
Luther's doctrine of predestination.ff In fact the antagonisms
* See, e.g., A 78 sq., 869 sq., 874 sqq. It is in view of such strong assertions that
Dr. Hartranft, Prospectus concerning the Corpus Schwenckf eldianorum, 1884,
speaks of Schwenckfeld as the man "who of all the leaders of the Reformation
penetrated furtherst into the spirit of religious liberty, who asserted its prin
ciples with unequivocal faithfulness and unflinching courage."
t C 307b.
t Cf. D 375, 16a, A 490a.
§ B 155c.
|| C 1012 and D 371 sqq.
f A 513, 801-808.
** Gerbert, Geschichte der Strassburger Sectenhewegung zur Zeit der Reformation,
1889, is especially to be consulted on Schwenckfeld's relations to these men. See
p. 135 for Capito's favorable judgment of the Silesian as late as 1534.
ft He called it a dogma Platonicum and a fatum, Stoicum; D 418ab, cf. 407a,
415 sq.

10
here, as in the case of the Romanists, Lutherans, and Anabaptists,
involved the basal elements of the Christian faith.*
In no one of the four chief branches of the divided Church,
therefore, could Schwenckfeld feel at home. "Why should any
one be surprised," he inquires, "if I or any other simple-minded
man should now concern himself about the Christian Church and
try to find where it is, inasmuch as among the four leading Churches
one openly condemns the others? The papal Church condemns
the Lutheran, the Lutheran condemns the Zwinglian, the Zwinglian
persecutes the Anabaptists, and the Anabaptists condemn all
others. But inasmuch as Christ is not divided, and his Spirit is a
spirit of concord and not of dissension, he cannot, it is manifest,
be ruling in all at the same time. ' 't It would be doing Schwenck
feld a grave injustice, therefore, to attribute to him any vain desire
to found a new sect. J He repeatedly avers that he has no pleasure
in being regarded as the head of the ' ' Schwenckfelders. ' ' It was
loyalty to his convictions, as he understood the truths of revelation,
that compelled him to maintain this four-cornered contest. At
tacked and persecuted by all the great parties, he defended him
self by means of an astonishing literary activity. Having left
Silesia late in 1528 or early in 1529, in order not to be a source of
trouble to his friend and patron, the Duke of Liegnitz, he spent the
rest of his life in southern Germany, roaming from city to city,
gathering his followers in quiet conventicles, answering the many
letters of inquiry addressed to him, gaming special influence among
the nobles and the lowly, and inspiring all with his own spirit of
toleration, courage, and sincerity.
Such, in broad outline, is the historical situation in which
Schwenckfeld developed and sought to popularize his peculiar con
ception of the rediscovered Gospel. Unable to identify himself with
any of the leading movements of religious thought, he was never
theless deeply influenced by them all. His spiritualistic tendencies
were everywhere colored, as was inevitable, by the theological
formulas of the age. His characteristic opinions are the product
of his peculiar ' ' mysticism, ' ' influenced by the types of thought in
* Schwenckfeld seldom names Calvin, and doubtless he knew little of his dis
tinctive doctrines. Their views in many particulars, as we shall have occasion
to observe, present striking resemblances. But the presuppositions, it is need
less to add, are irreconcilably different.
t A 95cd.
t C 571b.

11
the four chief branches of the Church as known to him, Romanism,
Lutheranism, Zwinglianism, and Anabaptism.
It is our purpose, therefore, to examine his views from the pre
cise angle from which this historical situation constantly compelled
him to set them forth, from the standpoint of the eucharistic con
troversy. It will be most advantageous to begin with Schwenckfeld's con
ception of the sacraments in general. This will introduce us to
the presuppositions of his whole system of thought, and enable us
to estimate aright his positive contribution to the many-sided dis
cussion of the Supper.
Our author's language concerning the nature of the sacraments
is not devoid of that carelessness as to terminology which renders-
so many of his statements difficult of interpretation. At first
sight, indeed, it might appear that, at least so far as ' ' the means of
grace" are concerned, there is little room for doubt as to his precise
meaning. The many misrepresentations of his views, however,
clearly prove that the matter is not so simple as a casual reading
might lead one to suppose. Occasional utterances, taken apart
from their context, have been made to support the extreme asser
tion that he deprived the sacraments of all objective content,
efficacy, and worth whatsoever. On the other hand, there are
statements which would not be out of place in any fair exposition
of the Reformed or even the Lutheran doctrine of the means of
grace. Manifestly we must, if possible, find a logical mean between
such apparently contradictory views.
In the first place, therefore, full justice must be done to Schwenck
feld's unequivocal opposition to the term Gnadenmittel. Only a
few of the numberless passages can be cited. "In fine, the doc
trine of means is an old sophistical doctrine, by which the hearts
are turned away from Christ in heaven down toward the creatures,*
in order there to find grace. "t "We on the contrary affirm that
all who seek salvation through creaturely means or external things,
no matter what they may be called, and not exclusively through the
sole mediator, the man Jesus Christ, are false teachers and lead
away from Christ, who is the only way, the door, means and media
tor, through whom we draw nigh unto God."f "Christ will give
us himself through the Holy Spirit, not through bodily means or
* For Schwenckfeld's peculiar idea of creaturehood, see pp. 36 sqq.
tC486d,487.t C 507c.

12
men, but through himself, in order that we by daily eating in faith
his flesh and blood may have fellowship with him and become par
takers of his nature and essence."* "God must himself, apart
from all external means, through Christ move the soul, speak to
it, work in it, if we are to have any experience of salvation and
eternal life, "f " Just as the Head is the Saviour of the whole body,
so he [i.e., any reader of Ephesians 5] will soon find that here no
bodily, external means or instrument can intervene as little as
between the vine and its branches."! Again, we are told "that
the Eternal and Almighty God, whom nothing can resist, does not
work through means or instruments like a cobbler or tailor, but
he acts freely and effects our salvation through himself, in Christ
his Son, although he also uses the service of the creatures to the
praise of his grace and for the good of man; but he is not bound
thereto. "§
Schwenckfeld's application of these basal principles to the sacra-
ment of the Supper resulted, as is well known, in his dispensing
altogether with the observance of this ordinance. The fierce dis
putes about the eucharist that prevailed even among the seven
factions of the Lutherans themselves,|| and in general the attention,
one-sided and excessive as he thought, that was paid to external
rites, led the reformer to counsel his followers to abstain, for the
time being, from all participation in this act of worship.f
Schwenckfeld's depreciatory views and practice concerning the
Supper have their close parallel, as might be expected, in his teach
ings concerning baptism. We have already seen that in common
with the Swiss radicals he rejected the baptism of children.** But
even in the case of adults there may be no necessity, either of means
or of precept, for this sacrament. It all depends, as we shall find,
upon the far-reaching distinction between the "inner" and the
"_outer" transaction, between the "baptism by the Spirit" and
the "baptism by water." Whether Schwenckfeld's view of this
* A868d.
t A 768b.
{A 866c.
§ A 424c; cf. C 86b, 482c, 486d, 507c, 532b, 997b, 1005b
||C259d.
«[ For his self-justification in this so-called Stillstand, see such passages as A
736 sq., 761, B 225c, C 274b, 640d, 895a, 983a.
** C 288-293 gives thirty reasons against pedobaptism. Burthis issue was not
a burning one for him. He declares : "Mir ist auch fiir meine Person gar Nichts
am Kindertauf gelegen; man taufe oder taufe nicht, so lass ich's dabei bleib
wollte lieber dass dieser Artikel noch zur Zeit geschwiegen wiirde" (C 286d1 '

13
rite is a "high" or a "low" one will depend, manifestly, upon
which of the two aspects of the sacrament he has in mind* For
the present it may suffice to say that the above statements about
the utter uselessness of external means of grace, in the ordinary
sense of the term, apply as much to the one sacrament as to the
other. Again, Schwenckfeld's theory of the Church is likewise influenced
by this fundamental dualism between the inner realities of religion
and their external signs. It cannot be denied that he lacked all
interest in ecclesiastical organizations. The fact that he was the
real founder of conventicles among the dissenters of the German
Reformation is no refutation of this assertion. His followers have,
moreover, maintained their independent existence to this day. But
these facts cannot be traced to any teaching of his as to the need or
utility, of a corporate church life. On the contrary, as Gerbert
remarks: "Schwenckfeld lacked every tendency toward ecclesias-
ticism; in fact, he entered into a decided opposition to the Pro
testantism that was shaping itself into Churches. ' 'f His spiritual
ism shared in this respect the defects of all genuine mysticism: the
benefits of communal life for the individual are not duly appreci
ated. With no talent for administration and no desire for the sep
arate organization of his adherents, he was content, for the sake
of the peace of Christendom, to work quietly^on a small scale, and
to trust to the power of his teachings for the defeat of his better
marshaled foes. With his opposition to all external ecclesiasticism,
he was only partially successful in realizing the importance of the
Church as a factor in the salvation of the world, f
But we must go even farther. The Scriptures themselves seem
to be endangered. The Pauline antithesis between the letter and
the spirit is applied in a manner which at least gives color to the
charge that Schwenckfeld rejected the normative authority of the
* It may here by way of anticipation be admitted, therefore, that Schwenck
feld in his use of the term "sacrament" often employs an undistributed middle.
He professes to adopt Augustin's definition (In Joann., 80 : 3) — "accedit verbum
ad elementum et fit sacramentum etiam ipsum tanguam verbum visibile" — but ere
long either the elementum or the verbum is spiritualized: the former becomes the
Holy Ghost or the latter the Eternal Word.
t L.c.,p. 135; cf.p. 170.
J Meanwhile, however, his admitted partial success may serve to remind us
that his subjectivism was not of that extreme kind that cut itself loose absolutely
from the historic past. Here too, in other words, we may expect to find a more
.satisfactory aspect of his doctrine of the Church than that commonly ascribed to
him and necessitated, it would seem, by some of his own statements.

14
Bible. Certainly, if only his most radical assertions were considered,
there would be little to differentiate him from the most fanatical
of the extremists. There is no end to the criticism of the Buch-
stdbler who, in mastering only the letter of Scripture, fail to discern
its real, spiritual content. Schrijtgelehrte and Gottesgelehrte are
generally separated by precisely the whole diameter in a given
sphere of speculation. In endless variety through all his numerous
works runs this polemic against the alleged deification of the letter
of Scripture by all four of the great Church parties. The external
word is not the real Word. The preached Gospel is not the true
Evangel, the genuine Mysterium. The Scriptures are not to be
identified out of hand with the Word of God.*
It is plain that we have here fallen upon a fundamental line of
thought whose ramifications we may expect to encounter at every
step of our progress. We have in fact begun to lay bare the very
heart of Schwenckfeld's gospel. As in many another theological
system, so also in his, the Word and sacraments are indissolubly linked
together. To ascertain the true nature of his theory of the sacra
ments, therefore, we are bound to examine his views concerning
the Word of God. But the identification of the Word with the
Son at once raises the larger question, What did he think of Christ?
Schwenckfeld reveals himself as a genuine disciple of the Reform
ation by his clear gr^tsp of the central importance in Christianity
of the Redeemer's person and work.f As some of the passages
already cited will have made clear, Christ is regarded as the only
possible mediator between man and God. J No saints can share
* The passages on these points are literally innumerable. They disprove the
thesis of Loofs (Dogmengeschichte3, p. 373) about the "damals nirgends ange-
fochtene Gleichsetzung von hi. Schrift und Wort Gottes." Cf. Harnack, Dog-
meng., IIP, p. 791.
t There was, to be sure, a latent tendency to make more of the "person"
than of the "work," that is, to permit the objective atonement of the historic
Jesus unduly to recede from view behind the incarnation considered as the great
redemptive fact. This was, moreover, a logical necessity in his system. At the
same time it must be said that the tendency was in part overcome by the reformer's
conscientious study of the Biblical basis of justification by faith. It is an inac
curate representation of the case, therefore, when Hodge declares (Systematic
Theology, I, p. 83): "He said that we are justified not by what Christ has done
for us, but by what He has done within us. " How much is made of the Saviour's
mission in his estate of humiliation will be shown later. Meanwhile it is to be con
ceded that the essence of Schwenckfeld's Christianity is to be found in his altogether
unique doctrine of the deification of Christ's flesh. What this principle logically
implied is one thing; what modification he gave it in practice is quite another.
J See also A 47ab, 547b, 583 sqq., 767.

15
this relationship with him* In the biblical phrase "through
Christ" the very preposition promotes his jealous regard for the
honor of the Son as an absolutely divine Saviour.f No theologian,
in fact, has ever more strongly recognized both the supernatural
and the Christocentric character of Christianity.! Hence the
numberless reminders that to know Christ aright is life's chief
duty. § The whole Gospel is conceived as a fourfold revelation of
the promises and prophecies concerning Christ, of their actual ful
fillment, of his glorification, and of our participation in him.||
Firmly and squarely, therefore, Schwenckfeld took his stand upon
the ultimate and comprehensive basis of the Reformation, the prin
ciple that salvation flows not from man but from God through
Christ. What then constitutes the essential difference between
him and his diverse antagonists? The answer is found in his char
acteristic doctrine of the spiritualistic mediatorship of Christ,
which affected the whole range of his thought and fixed a gulf
between him and his opponents on all questions pertaining to the
Scriptures, the Church and the Sacraments. We therefore pro
ceed, in the light of this central fact, to take a second survey of
these related subjects, reproducing as faithfully as possible the
polemic bearings of his system.
First in the order of thought, as also in the order of importance,
is the antinomy between the Scriptures and the Word of God.
And on this, as on most of the other issues, the chief opposition
was directed against the party from whom he had learned most,
the Lutherans.
Luther had rediscovered the Christian religion by rediscovering
the central truth of the Gospel, the revelation of God's grace in
Jesus Christ. Deeply influenced by the German mystics — they
were, of course, the legitimate representatives of vital piety in
those days, in opposition to that official system of scholastic the
ology, mediseval asceticism and sensuous ecclesiasticism that had
all but converted religion into a flat moralism — he none the less
was saved from all ecstatic excesses by the safeguards of a pro
foundly ethical spirit that never failed to ground the assurance of
* b 102, 290.
t D 292, cf. 339b.
% See e.g., A 327 sq., 725c, D 287, 595, 647, 655, 698.
§ A 239, 631, 644 sq., 664, 907 sqq. See the treatise (D 77-91), Ermahnung zur
wahren und seligmachenden Erkenntnis Christi.
|| A 860-865.

16
its pardon, the joy of its salvation, upon the objectively revealed
truth of God, and therefore upon the historic work of Christ. His
pearl of greatest price was his faith, the assurance, based upon the
Scriptures, that he by the merit of Christ was standing in the favor
of God. But in the light of his personal experience, and especially
under pressure from the Romanists, his enemies on the right wing,
Luther was now led to criticise and indeed to subvert the traditional
theory of the magical ex opere operato efficacy of the sacraments.
In fact the very existence of these rites, regarded in any proper
sense of the term as means of grace, was endangered. Reduced in
number from seven to two (or three) * they furthermore became
mere external signs of the one true sacrament, the Word.f Gauged
by his principle, "faith constitutes the power of the sacrament,"
their value is seen to be reduced practically to nothing.J
But Luther in those first days of heroic defense and aggression
went much farther. It is well known with what boldness and
scorn of logical consequences he could apply the criterion of his
own religious experience to the books of the New Testament,
namely, whether or not they made Christ their chief concern. §
He did not hesitate, therefore, to lay threatening hands upon the
letter of Scripture, whenever it seemed impossible to bring the text
into harmony with the facts of his own religious life. The very
term ' ' Word of God" had not from the first that fixed content and
value which it later acquired. He had freely employed the Augus
tinian distinction between the ' ' inner ' ' and the ' ' outer ' ' Word. II

* See the treatise, De Captivitate Babylonica, which is not only epoch-making in
the history of the sacraments in general, but also fundamental to Luther's develop
ment of the doctrine of the Supper in particular.
t Cf . Thimme, Entwicklung und Bedeutung der Sakramentslehre Luthers, in the
Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 1901, p. 754. On the general subject of Luther's
doctrine of the sacraments consult also Kahnis, Die Lehre vom Abendmahl,
Gobel, in Theologisclie Studien und Kritiken, 1843, 2. H., pp. 333 sqq., and the
histories of doctrine, especially Seeberg.
J Cf. his Unterricht an die Beichtkinder (anno 1521): "Das gottliche AVort
in der Bulle verdammt, ist mehr denn alle Dinge, welches die Seele nicht mag
entbehren, mag aber wohl des Sacraments entbehren; so wird dich der rechte
Bischof Christus selber speisen, geistlich, mit demselben Sacrament. Lass dir
nicht seltsam sein, ob du dasselbe Jahr nicht zum Sacrament eehest" (St Touis
Ed., Vol. XIX, col. 812).
§ Literally "drive Christ" ("Christum treiben") ; Preface to the Ep. of James.
|| It ought at once to be added, however, that Luther soon succeeded in estab
lishing a definite and fixed relation between the two: the former is to all int
and purposes, bound to the latter.

17
It is idle to speculate as to what he might have done with this
formula had it not, in the hands of the fanatics, imperiled his
whole achievement. The fact remains, however, that not only in
his critical remarks on the New Testament books, but in many an
occasional utterance, as well, he countenanced the separation, so
dear to the mystic's heart, between the Scriptures and the Word
of God, between the "outer" and the "inner" Word*
It was with such aspects of Luther's original teachings that
Schwenckfeld was in perfect accord, f In this sense he interpreted
the irnmediate past. ' ' Thus our doctores in the beginning taught
the true view of the Word of God and his divine ordinance, and
built upon the one solid foundation, namely, upon the eternal living
Word Christ which is with the Father. They accordingly taught
that faith and eternal salvation are not bound to any external
word or work nor given through any external means, but, as God's
work, gift, and pure grace, they come without means from God
and the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ, who as the head flows
into them as the members of his body. "J And for this very
reason Schwenckfeld frequently expresses his disapproval of the
reactionary tendency that took hold of Luther about the year 1522.
"Thereafter, however, when they began to quarrel so much and
give their carnal desires so much scope in the things of God; after
the controversy on the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ
had arisen, .... they inverted the true order in the work of
God, in the spread of his Word, and in man's justification, and in
this and many other respects they held and taught views contrary
to their former doctrine and books, so palpably indeed that one
could fairly lay hands on the discrepancy." §
That Luther's view of the Word and sacraments did in fact
suffer a retrogressive transformation cannot be denied. || We
* Cf . Schenkel, Das Wesen des Protestantismus, 1, 130; Harnack, Dogmeng., Ill3,
771 sq.; Loofs, Dogmeng., p. 373.
f It would be instructive to carry out in detail the resemblances — often enough ,
of course, they are merely verbal and superficial — between Schwenckfeld and
Luther before the outbreak of the Wittenberg disturbances. Cf . Hase (Kirchen
geschichte, III, 1, p. 300): "Er hielt eine Richtung fest, das innere Geistes-
christenthum, die friiher auch in Luther eine Macht war. ' '
X C 339cd.
§ L.c, p. 340c.
|| Thimme, I.e., p. 876, is inclined to think that the differences between the
earlier and the later Luther on the subject of the sacraments have been unduly
emphasized as against the confessedly common and permanent elements. After
2

18
cannot go into the details of this reaction. Only a few of the more
striking passages may be cited in order that we may the better
understand Schwenckfeld's polemic* ' ' God deals with us in two
ways: externally through the oral word and through bodily signs
(baptism and the eucharist). Inwardly he deals with us through
the Holy Spirit and faith together with other gifts; but always in
due order and measure, so that the external things shall and must
precede, and the internal things come after and through the ex
ternal ones; in such wise, that he has determined to give the inter
nal things to no one save through the external things; for he will
give no one the Spirit or faith without the external word and sign
which he has appointed for that purpose."t Very characteristic
is his assertion: ' ' God lets the Word of the Gospel go forth and the
seed fall into the hearts of men. Where the seed is lodged in the
heart, there is the Holy Spirit to regenerate; there is produced
another man, other thoughts, other words and works."f How
much importance is at times attached to the verbum vocale may be
seen in the following statement: "The fingers which baptized
me are not the fingers of a man but of the Holy Spirit, and the
mouth and word of the preacher which I heard are not his but the
word and sermon of the Holy Spirit." §
But it is needless to multiply the evidences: in the genuinely
all, it is a question of having an adequate standard of measurement. To a man
of Schwenckfeld's type the differences, even as Thimme represents them, would
necessarily appear to constitute a lamentable relapse toward Rome. That Re
formed theologians will in this matter agree with Harnack's severe criticism of
Luther goes without saying. Harnack, Dogmeng., IIP, 792 sqq.
* Otto, Die Anschauungen vom heiligen Geiste bei Luther (Gottingen, 1898),
has an excellent section on the relation of the Word and Spirit in Luther.
t Luthers Werke, St. Louis Ed., XX, col. 202. The Augsburg Confession gave
classical expression to this view (Schaff, Creeds, III, p. 10): "Nam per Verbum
et Sacramenta, tanquam per instrumenta, donatur Spiritus Sanctus, qui fidem
efficit, ubi et quando visum est Deo, in iis, qui audiunt Evangelium. ' ' Luther
himself in the Schmalcald Articles maintained (Hase, Libri Symbolici, P. Seeunda,
Artt. Smalc.,VIII, 3): "Et in his, quae vocale et externum verbum concernunt,
constanter tenendum est, Deum nemini Spiritum vel gratiam suam largiri nisi
per verbum et cum verbo externo et praecedente, ut ita pramuniamus nos
adversus Enthusiastas, id est, spiritus, qui jactitant, se ante verbum et sine
verbo spiritum habere, et adeo Scripturam sive vocale verbum judicant, flectunt
et reflectunt pro libito." He went so far as to say (ibid., VIII, 9) : "Et nullus
Propheta, sive Elias sive Elisams, Spiritum sine decalogo sive verbo vocali
accepit." X St. Louis Ed., IX, col. 1163.
§ This and many other equally remarkable passages may be found in Otto I c

19
Lutheran conception the Spirit is bound to the Word and the
sacraments, and these contain in themselves the supernatural
grace_which produces saving effects in the believing heart* More
and more the visible sign had been magnified until, in alleged con
formity with the commandment of God, the external sacrament is
identified as a verbum visibile with the Word, and this in turn is
made the real manifestation of God's grace.
Against this conception of Christianity, in which he rightly
divined a retrogression toward Rome, Schwenckfeld opposed first
of all a genetically different theory of the Word. The distinction
between the ' 'inner.' ' and the ".outer' ' Word assumes a basal
importance. The following passage contains the heart of the
matter: "The Word, therefore, when the servants of the Spirit
preach or teach, is of two kinds, but with a marked difference in
the transactions: one which is of God and itself God, which also
richly lives and works in the servant's heart; that is the inner Word,
and is in reality nfjthing_other than Christ in the Holy Spirit. It
is inwardly revealed and heard by the new man with the believing
ears of the heart. The other, which serves this inner Word with
voice, sound and expression, is called the oral or external Word,
and this is heard with carnal ears, even those of the natural man,
and is written and read in letters. But he who has read or heard
only that and not also the inner Word has not heard the Gospel of
Christ, the Gospel of grace, nor has he received or understood it."|
Corresponding, then, to the inner and the outer Word are two
kinds of hearing, two kinds of faith, two kinds of knowledge of
Christ, two kinds of biblical exegesis : that of the letter and that of
the Spirit. The prime requisite is a spiritual apprehension of the
Gospel, i.e., of Christ the Word.
But of what account, then^are the Scriptures? That they are in
no case to be regarded as ' ' means of grace, ' ' in the ordinary sense
of the term, we have already seen. But Schwenckfeld's repug
nance to the term Gnadenmittel must not mislead us into supposing
that he took the position of the extreme radicals on this question.
* The adjective "believing" is of course all-important in the Lutheran state
ment. Schwenckfeld indulged in much unwarranted criticism of his opponents
because of his misapprehension of the nature of their "faith."
t A 767ab; see the whole letter, pp. 764-780. Cf. D 241, 330, 361, 563, 630bc,
887a, and the tract Vom Unterschiede des Worts des Geistes und Buchstabens.
This dualism concerning the Word colors the whole work of Schwenckfeld. It
is based, as we shall find, upon a philosophic dualism between God and the creature
world.

20
We must do justice, in turn, to what we may regard as the higher
elements of his view. . .
The Bible, it is clearly recognized, comes from God* It is in
spired by the Holy Spirit.f In numberless passages Schwenck
feld seeks to clear himself from the charge that he is a despiser of
the sacred oracles. He repudiates the calumny of ^ his enemy
Flacius Illyricus, who charged him with teaching that ' ' faith is not
according to the Holy Scripture, but the Holy Scripture must be
directly conformed to faith."* The Scriptures should be faithfully
read and diligently preached. § Catechetical instruction m them
ought to be revived. || Picture books dealing with biblical events
ought to be printed for the special benefit of children.^
But still weightier considerations must be brought forward.
Schwenckfeld unequivocally asserts the normative and binding
authority of the Scriptures. To be sure the contrary, as has been
noted, seems at times to be the case. None the less the Bible
was his last court of appeal. On all the controverted points of the
age he went directly to the Scriptures.** With him as with his
opponents the final question was simply the exegetical one.jt He
never presumes to place his Christian consciousness in a position
of higher authority than that of the written Word. J J He ex-
* A 441, D 545a. t D 868b. J C 464b ; cf . D 545, 868.
§ C486: "Und am ersten dass Philippi [Melanchthons] Beschuldigung nicht
wahr ist, dass ich das Horen, Lesen, Betrachten des geschriebenen oder miind-
lichen Evangelii verwerfe oder sage, dass Gott nicht dabei (wenn's im Glauben
geschieht) mit Gnaden wirke." The following is decisive on the question of
preaching the Word (B 162c): "Der Predigt halben wtinscht er, dass nicht
allein in den Kirchen, sondern auch in Hausern, auf den Markten und Dachern,
zu Wasser und Land, der Name Jesu Christi recht bekannt werde, ja dass in der
ganzen Welt das Evangelium Jesu Christi und der Reichtum seiner Gnaden
verkiindigt, ausgebreitet, und gepredigt werde."
|| B 368d, 373d.
If B 380 ; see also the whole tract, Ein kurzer Bericht von der Weise des Cate-
chismi, by Val. Krautwald.
** Cf. A 28d: "Also muss man auch bald wenn einem ein streitiger Punkt wird
vorgeworfen, zur Bibel laufen, das Vorderste und das Hinderste (und nicht
allein den blossen Spruch) dabei wohl besichtigen, bedenken, und ansehen, so
wird man es oft viel anders finden als es sich mancher lasst einbilden." Cf. C
77d. ft His works abound in expositions of biblical passages. His exegesis is to be
sure, influenced by the allegorical tendencies of the time, but it fairly attains
the average level of sobriety and moderation. And however difficult it may be
for us to harmonize some of his extreme utterances as to the inner and outer
Word, the fact must never be lost sight of that after all he gets his "theology"
from the same book as his opponents.
XX It is manifestly a perversion when Kurtz (Kirchengeschichte, 9. Aufl II
150) declares "he elevated over the external Word of God in the Scriptures the
inner Word of the Spirit of God in man. ' '

21
pressly denies that he wished to have Scripture conformed to his
faith, rather than have his faith conformed to the Scriptures. To
be sure he often speaks slightingly of the humanistic culture of his
day. But the secret of his attitude toward the Bible is to be found
in his conviction that the book was being radically misunderstood
by his opponents because of their lack of true faith. Philosophia,
Frau Hulda, Vernunft, Dialectica, Rhetorica, and Grammatica
were wresting the Scriptures to the Church's destruction* The
prime requisite, therefore, is to be taught of God.f To this end
the Spirit must illuminate and sanctify the reader's mind. For
the oral Word is not enough. J Preaching may reach the ear
without touching the heart. § The external Word is not a media
tor of salvation, || but when rightly, i.e., spiritually understood,
it is a source of the real knowledge of Christ, which is the one
thing needful. One passage may serve to give the contents of
many: "Accordingly the Gospel of Christ is also spoken of,
preached, written, and understood in such a double manner (al
though before God there is only one Gospel, just as there is only
one Christ), namely, according to the letter and according to the
Spirit. At one time the Scripture speaks of the Gospel according
to the external service; at another, according to the inner mystery
and divine essence; or according to history and according to the
power of God. The Gospel according to history, or according to
the [external] service, and outside of us, is the discourse or out
ward sermon concerning Christ, given or heard by the servant or
preacher, without the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, only in the
letter^jmd grasped by human reason and with practice and dili
gence fastened in the memory, without any renewing or fructifying
of the hearty JThis is not as yet the true Gospel, indeed scarcely
a picture, copy, shadow, or evidence of the true living Gospel of
* Of the many passages dealing with his distrust of reason, see e.g., A 234cd,
257, 438, 515, 828, B 294, 446, C 117, 252, 728, C 1016, D 159, 874.
X See the treatise, Vom Unterschied der Schriftgelehrten und Gottesgelehrten;
was auch Schriftgelehrte und Gottesgelehrte heissen. Schenkel, Das Wesen, etc.,
Ill, 98, not inaptly declares : ' ' Gelehrte und Verkehrte sind ihm sinnverwandt. ' '
X B 349c, C 235b, 535c.
§ C 487 sq. shows how Luther himself had admitted this, but later with his
adherents had relapsed from this position.
|| A 765. This however does not mean, as Dr. Hodge (Syst. Theology, I, 82)
interprets Schwenckfeld's view of the Bible, that "the Scriptures are not, even
instrumentally, the source of the divine life." Logically indeed Schwenckfeld
was bound to come to this conclusion. But it was characteristic of him to
shrink from the extremes to which the strict logic of his system would have
driven him. The ordinary doctrinal phrases can never with justice be applied
to him. His thought is cast in a different mould.

22
Christ, no matter how skillful, learned, and eloquent the preacher
may be. Therefore the Gospel of Christ, to speak strictly, is
nothing other than the joyful, comforting good news of redemp
tion and eternal salvation, which the angel of the great council,
Jesus Christ, brings through the Holy Spirit to an afflicted heart,
which he first punishes for sin, and calls to repentance, and to
which he then proclaims the divine peace purchased by his blood,'
etc.* But of course the decisive question is not whether the "external
Word" needs the accompaniment of the "inner Word" or not,
but rather whether or not the latter may dispense with the former.
Schwenckfeld's opponents, it is plain from his defensive attitude,
accused him of rejecting the Scriptures. But it is equally clear
that his assertion of the need of a spiritual understanding of the
Word neither exhausts the a priori possibilities of the case nor con
stitutes a complete statement of the actual facts. The specific
question must be answered, Is there any spiritual knowledge pos
sible apart from the written Word?
The resemblance in this particular between Schwenckfeld and
the Quakers is too obvious not to have been a subject for frequent
comment. Barclay,t indeed, maintains that_ ti^_teaching^ of
Schwenckfeld andJFox ^jvas identical on three important points:
first as to the "Inward Light, Life and Word"; secondly as to
"Immediate Revelation"; and lastly as to the inability of any
external bodily act to convey a spiritual reality to the soul. But
neither is there any historical connection traceable between
Schwenckfeld and the Friends, nor can there be said to be anything
more than a general correspondence and similarity between their
ideas; both represent more or -less extreme reactions against ecclesi
asticism, sacerdotalism, and sacramentarianism. As against the
orthodox Quakers, Schwenckfeld taught a peculiar Christology
which gives his whole system a different complexion; and as
against the heterodox Quakers he held a far more moderate
position concerning the nature, purpose and extent of the Inner
Light. Now and then, indeed, he uses the language of the most
radical spiritualists. Especially does this seem to be the case
when statements are divorced from their contexts. The following
is a characteristic negation: "It is here evident, therefore, that
the true saving knowledge of God the Father and his Son Jesus
Christ comes from no other source than a gracious divine revela
tion  That is, that the Son of God, Christ, can be rightly
* D 331b. Cf. A 687-689.
t The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, p. 237 sag.

23
known neither through human reason, nor through Scripture,
nor out of any external thing."* It is well known, moreover, how
strenuously he insisted that his unique interpretation of the words
' 'this is my body" was due to special revelation. f This was one
of the specific charges brought against him by Capito and Blaurer
during his sojourn in southern Germany. J But what after all is
his doctrine of "revelation"? The context of the passage last
quoted is too important to leave unnoticed: "That is, that the
Son of God, Christ, can be rightly known neither through human
reason, nor through Scripture, nor out of any external thing,
although the Holy Scriptures and the created things bear witness
to him."§ In fact the "light" so highly prized is naught but
what the Apostle Paul prays may be given his Ephesian readers,
"the spirit of wisdom and revelation" in the knowledge of Christ.||
"That is what the Lord Christ means by hearing and learning the
Word of the Father and coming to Christ, and as he says, 'they
shall all be taught of God.' This some incorrectly refer to the
Scriptures; they dislike also the word revelation, regarding it
indeed as a dream, a fancy, a fanatical excess, although in very
truth it is the living doctrine of God from His Spirit in the believing
heart."1[ The revelation of spiritual truth, therefore, comes not
from the natural man's interpretation of the Scriptures but only
from the real Word Christ himself, through his Spirit operating
now with and now without the letter of the Scriptures or any exter
nal thing. Thus was left open, to be sure, a way of retreating, if
need were, to the extremes of mere subjectivism. But the practical
issues of the day made him retain a strong hold upon the sacred
text: the spiritual as distinguished from the literal interpretation
of the Scriptures is the heart and core of his doctrine concerning
'*' revelations" to the individual Christian. He was opposed to
Luther's idea that the Spirit never operates savingly except through
the Word, and that the verbum itself is illustrans, i.e., that the
Scriptures contain within themselves a supernatural and divine
power, so that their efficacy is independent of the special accom
paniment of the Spirit.** But that he did not quite reproduce the
*A427d.t More generally the term used is "Offenbarung"; but occasionally we find
"gnadige Heimsuching."
{See Heyd's article, "Blaurer, Schnepf, Schwenckfeld," in the Tubinger
Zeitschrift fiir Theologie, 1838, H. 4, pp. 29, 35.
§A427d. || A 428a. f A 428a.
** Hering, Die Mystik Luthers, p. 45, correctly expresses Luther's view as fol
lows: "Das Grundthema seiner Schriftauslegung: das Wort ist Geist, ist von
dem Zusatz begleitet zu denken, dass Geist im Wort ist. ' '

24:
views of the great body of Christians of all ages, but allowed him
self to reveal a bias, logically indeed not without warrant in the
position of his chief opponents, yet practically objectionable,
against the letter of Scripture, is due not only to the polemic
interest that dominated his work but also and primarily to the
necessities of his system of thought. Wherever the practical
problems of his situation claim his chief attention, however, the
decisive authority of the Bible is freely conceded. "Thus do
we conclude our admonition concerning the true and spiritual
knowledge of Christ, which also is the sole criterion (basis et norma)
by which to know and judge all manner of doctrines, opinions,
errors and sects. Nor do we know any better or more convenient
way for the promotion, reformation or improvement of the Chris
tian religion and doctrine than the true knowledge of Christ, which
must be secured, not only out of Scripture but rather out of the
gracious gift of the Father's revelation, yet in such wise that it will
always agree or harmonize with the testimony oj Scripture."* The
Spirit therefore works when and where and how he pleases. But
the Scriptures are his product, and therefore furnish a faithful
criterion for ascertaining and estimating all his revealing activities.
When rightly used they simply point to Christ.t They recede in
importance behind the manifestations of the subjective religious
life produced by the immediate operation of the Spirit upon the
heart. But Schwenckfeld, in spite of his strong dislike of the term
Gnadenmittel, still concedes the serviceableness of the Scriptures in
pointing the enlightened reader to the real Word of God, the Son
himself. The blessings of the Gospel are communicated by the
Spirit operating without means upon the heart : the Scriptures are
no mediators of salvation. But none the less, when rightly inter
preted, the inspired documents fulfill to all intents and purposes
the function of means of grace in any but the strictly Lutheran
acceptation of the term. "For although God the Almighty him
self teaches his disciples inwardly through Christ in the Holy Spirit
the pure divine truth, he has nevertheless appointed for them
external teachers and learning also, such as servants of the Word
of God, preachers, teachers, expositors of the Holy Scriptures etc.
whom God the Lord calls, sends, and through his Spirit urges to
promote his divine doings among his people, whose service he also
* " Doch so dass es alle Wege mit der Schrif t Zeugnis stimme oder ubereintraee ' '
(D 62b).
t D 868cd (in margin): "Die heilige Schrif t weiset von sich und tiber sich zum
Arzt Christo, der allein Gesundheit und Leben giebt." ';Die H. Schrift zeuet
vom Arzte und der Kraft seiner Arztnei, sie ists aber nicht'selbst " Cf C 1010

25
blesses, in order that it may serve in the grace of God for the edifica
tion of Christians in Christ and their soul's salvation."*
The same unstable equilibrium is to be seen n Schwenckfeld's
attitude toward the Church as an institution for the furtherance
of the religious life. We have seen how little regard or capacity
he had for organization,- how his strongly anti-ecclesiastical spii it
voiced itself in declarations which, followed to their logical conclu
sion, would leave no place whatever for the external Church.
Against this very charge of abolishing the ministerial office and
the public worship of the sanctuary he had frequently to defend
himself, f It is plain, however, that the criticism is only to a cer
tain extent justifiable. He himself sets forth his position as fol
lows: "I object to no one's hearing sermons as opportunity offers;
nor do I (as the Baptists do) bind the conscience in this matter as
if it were. sin; nor do I advise the endurance of exile. I therefore in
these days of dispersion let every one abide in his freedom. "J
Here, as in the doctrine of the Word, Schwenckfeld distinguished
between the internal and the external Church. § The latter, the
true Church of God, is madexip of the company of the real believers.
Their head is Christ. He rules and builds them up.|| Their salva
tion is not bound to any external means or institution as an indis
pensable condition for its bestowal.]f But on the other hand there
are not wanting indications that Schwenckfeld was unwilling to go
the whole length of the Anabaptist idealization of the historic
Church. Even liturgical ceremonies have a helpful mission, pro-
* D 893d.
t Melanchthon, under date of October 18, 1535, wrote as follows to Frecht:
"De Schwenkfeldio et Franco, Chronicorum scriptore, placet mihi judicium
tuum. Nam et ego utrumque severe coercendum esse judico, etsi Schwenkfeldium
stultum magis quam improbum esse arbitror; sed tamen hypocrisis apud vulgus
nocet et habethoc [hie], ut ex CEcolampadio audire memini, nullam ecclesias
formam, hoc est, nulla ministeria probat .... Ego vero omnes, qui in nostris
ecclesijs de ministeriis publicis parum honorifice sentiunt dignos odio esse censeo ' '
(Corpus Ref., ed. Bretschneider, II, col. 955) .
X C 894c.
§ "Nun ist das Wortlein Kirche wquivocum, das ist, dass man von der Kirche so
wohl als vom Glauben oder Glaubigen auf zweierlei Weise pflegt zu reden: einmal
nach dem Grunde der Wahrheit wie es vor Gott damit steht, wie die Kirche aus
Christo in seinem Reiehe wird erbaut und vereinigt, wie er sie regiert und erhalt
im Reiehe der Gnaden .... Zum andern mal redet man von der Kirche Christi
nach ihrer Versammlung im Dienste der Apostel und anderer Diener des heiligen
Geistes welche von Christo dem Himmelkonig, seinem Volke zu dienen, und in
der Erbauung seines Leibes Handreichung zu thun bestellt werden." B 654bd;
cf. D 10-15, Von der christlichen Kirche.
|| A 870b, 97a.
If It is interesting to note that Schwenckfeld taught that there were undoubt
edly Christians even among the Turks of that day. A 782 sq.

26
vided only that no trust be placed in them* Preaching is there
fore of cardinal importance, even if it is not to be identified with
the power of Christ, but only to be regarded as pointing toward
him and thereby serving him.f Even pictures, if not worshiped,
may be used with advantage 4
It must, of course, be admitted that Schwenckfeld had not a
sufficiently clear and consistent view as to the need of ecclesiastical
organization. He could, in perfect harmony with his rigoristic
and puritanic requirements, have insisted upon a fair degree of or
ganization under leaders of his own choosing. Few, however, will
fail to approve his views so far as their criticism of the historical
situation is concerned. § He could not, with his rich spiritual ex
perience, rest content with a Csesaro-papal ecclesiasticism which
seemed to endanger the whole Protestant cause, which in large
measure destroyed the new-born spirit of religious freedom by per
mitting the use of the sword even in matters of such subordinate
importance as the observance of ceremonial rites.|| He left the ex
isting Churches not from choice but from necessity : they did not in
any satisfactory measure embody his ideals. But to organize his
followers according to his own principles he had neither the wish
nor the ability. And thus his theory of the Church reached no ad
vanced stage of development. His views oscillated between an
apparently absolute denial of the need and advantage of an external
institution and the generous recognition of the mission of the de
* A 846c: "Also mochte ich auch von Ceremonien sagen welche ausserlicher
Gottesdienst oder Kirchentibungen heissen, deren viel nur wohl und niitzlich
mogen gebraucht werden. Ich achte es auch nicht dafur, dass irgend ein Christ
so vermessen sein kann, dass er alle Ceremonien (ob man wohl kein Vertrauen drein
setzen noch die Seligkeit drin soil suchen) ohne Unterschied wolle verwerfen.
Sonst wtirde er das Predigtamt, und was in der Kirche ausserlieh gehandelt wird,
auch miissen verwerfen." Cf. A 700a, 791b.
t C 997bc. X A 846a.
§ See the impartial judgment of Erbkam, Geschichte der prot. Sekten, p. 435 sq.
|| B 655d: "Deshalb denn die Definition und Beschreibung der Kirchen, wie
sie in der Confession [sc. Augustana] gestellt .... billig soil te gebessert werden ;
damit wir Gott den Herrn und seine Werke nicht abermals an uns unniitze
Knechte noch an den Papst und Bischof aufs Neue zwingen, heften oder anbinden
sondern den Gang der Gnaden Christi und seines Geistes Lehramt, der die Herzen
lehret und geistet wo er will, desgleichen die Erbauung des Leibes Christi tiberall
frei im Geiste und unangebunden stehen lassen. Wie den auch die hi. Christliche
Kirche nicht als eine andere Polizei an dies oder jenes Land eingezaunt
weder an Rom, Wittenberg, Zurich, Genf, Mahren, noch anderswo, weder an
Zeit, Personen, noch an etwas Ausserliches, ja weder an Prediger, Predigt oder
Sacrament gebunden, sondern mit ihren Gliedern allenthalben durch die ganze
Welt, wo glaubige Christen sind, ist ausgebreitet. " On the functions of magis
trates concerning the Church, see A 79 sqq., 401 sqq., et passim. Cf . also Schenkel
Das Wesen des Prot., Ill, 382-386. '

27
facto organizations, provided only they inculcated a spiritual knowl
edge of the Head of the Church*
This survey of Schwenckfeld's doctrine of the Word and the
Church will help us to secure a just estimate of his view of the
purpose of the sacraments. We are prepared to find his funda
mental dualism asserting itself also in this branch of his system.
' ' For to a complete sacrament two things are necessary, an inner
and spiritual element and an outer, bodily element."! The sacra
ments, therefore, are profound mysteries, and not merely external
ceremonies. J They are more than the mere addition of the outer
Word to the given elements. § The prime requisite here too,
therefore, is precisely that which has been so often emphasized, the
"judgment of the spiritual man," the correct interpretation of
the Scriptures. It is this lack of spiritual insight that is the cause
of all error concerning the sacraments. || For this very reason the
eucharist should continually be discussed, upon the biblical basis,
in order that the true view may be obtained.^ More must be made,
in any event, of the^rjurtualsujnificance of the ordinances.** The
failure of his opponents to do this convicts them of being the real
despisers of the sacraments.ff On the other hand, he strongly pro
tests against the justice of this charge so frequently made against
him. J J It is not with the sacraments, but with the misuse of them,
that he finds fault. It was his conviction that the Church was
misinterpreting these sacred rites that led him to advocate the
Stillstand in the case of the Supper, and the corresponding custom
of substituting .XQr_„sacramentaI baptism .only a consecratory
* See the (LVI) Fragen von der christlichen Kirche, which are really so many
attacks upon the worldly ecclesiasticism of the day, and so many defenses of his
own position between the Romanist and Anabaptist extremes.
t B, Part I, p. 140d.
X A, p. Xld. Cf. B, Part I, p. 85cd: "Drum wenn man von Sacramenten
Christi und seiner christlichen Kirche redet, so redet man vornehmlich von einem
Geheimnis und gottlich offenbarten Handel, darin die christglaubige Seele ist
und wird gereinigt, erleuchtet, wiedergeboren und von Stinden abgewaschen,
durch das Bad des Wassers im Worte, als im Sacrament der Taufe; oder darinnen
sie wird gespeiset, getrankt, und gesattigt mit dem Leib und Blut J. Christi,
dadurch sie wird im gottlichen Leben erhalten und darinnen immer ferner auf-
wachsen, als im Sacrament des Nachtmals."
§ Cf. A 505a, 855c. || B, Part I, 101b. If A 342d, 393a-c.
** A 492c. tt A, pp. Xd, XIa.
XX D 15d: "Von den heiligen Sacramenten .... glaube ich alles was die
heilige Schrift sagt und wie sie vom Herrn Christo gelehrt und fiir die christ-
glaubigen eingesetzt, auch von lieben Aposteln und der christlichen Kirche nach
dem Befehl des Herrn sind gebraucht worden und noch in der versammelten
Gemeinde Gottes also gebraucht und verstanden sollen werden." Cf. D
21 sq., 544, 973, C 283b, 687d, 730d, B 104c, A 331, 394, etc.

28
prayer. He takes his stand once more upon the sole mediatorship
of Christ*
The general principles just mentioned we find exemplified in the
statements concerning baptism. The outer rite must be carefully
distinguished from the inner reality. "But we must remember
that in the complete sacrament of the baptism of Christ two things
are present, namely, an external and an internal one; the elemental
water and the water of divine grace which purifies the conscience."!
The external water cannot cleanse. "Let them know in the first
place that the washing away of sins does not belong to the external
baptism. Then let them be assured that no external thing, wash
ing or water, can reach or remove sin. In the third place, they do
not permit Christ in himself and by himself to be a perfect Saviour.
It is therefore a grave wrong to the work of Christ and his Spirit
if one ascribes or concedes to the water or other created things in
the work of salvation something that belongs to Christ alone." J
The primary and essential element in baptism, therefore, is the
inner grace, _the bestowal of which is absolutely independent of the
* C 448d: "Das ihr begehret zu wissen, wie ihr es richten sollt, dass Nichts
ausserliches das Herz erreiche, das sollt ihr richten auf den Handel unserer
Gerecht- und Seligwerdung, namlich das Herz zu bekehren, zu reinigen und
erneuern, denn wer vermag solches denn allein* Gott und Christus im heiligen
Geiste? Das fleischliche Herz wird wohl oft durch ausserliche Dinge bewegt zu
Freuden und Traurigkeit; es wird aber drum durch ausserliche Dinge nicht selig
noch umgekehrt. Christus ist der Erneuerer des Herzen; er allein vermag die
Sunde draus zu nehmen und seine Gnade darein zu geben." Cf. A 597 sqq., 780,
C 480c, 619, D 440, 468ab, 738. For extended discussions of what he regarded
as an unwarranted emphasis upon the "external" sacraments, see C 1015-1021,
and especially the first two letters in Part I of B (pp. 10-146), Vom Grund und
Ursach des Irrtums und Spans im Artikel vom Sacrament des Herrn Nachtmals
and Vom Verstande, Gebrauch, und Wiirdigkeit der Sacramente Christi. The
Bekenntnis und Rechenschaft von den Hauptpuncten des christlichen Glaubens
(D pp. 1-62) is a precis of his whole system.
t A 195bc.
X A 32cd. Cf. A 37Scd, 497cd, C 397, 438b, 520a, and many other passages in
all of the folios. To be sure Luther had taken pains to bring the word of com
mandment (Matt, xxviii. 19) into connection with the water of baptism: "Was
ser thut's freilich nicht, sondern das Wort Gottes so mit und bei dem Wasser ist
und der Glaube so solchem Worte Gottes im Wasser trauet; denn ohne Wort
Gottes ist das Wasser schlecht Wasser und keine Taufe' ' (Der kleine Catechismus,
Part IV, in Schaff's Creeds, III, p. 86). None the less, especially in the matter
of infant baptism, Luther reopened the way for the magical efficiency of the
ex opere operato theory of the sacrament. The consecrated water itself in fact
possessed a divine potency. It was heavenly, holy, durchgottet. Cf . Schenkel I.e.'
I, 448 sq.; Thimme, I.e., 898; Hering, I.e., p. 287 sq., and Harnack, Doqmena
III3, 792. ""

29
external rite* The blood of Christ is the only sprinkling that
removes the defilements of sin,f or rather — the reason for this
characteristic emphasis upon the unity and totality of Christ's
person will appear later — Christ himself is the bath of regenera
tion, j
Precisely so does the right understanding of the eucharist neces
sitate a sharp distinction between the outer signs and the inner
realities, between the external and the internal sacrament. The
parallelism in this respect between the Supper and Baptism is
complete. "As I have hitherto spoken of two kinds of water
in the Christian sacrament of baptism, so I find in the complete
sacramental transaction of the Lord's Supper two different kinds
of bread, or food, and drink: namely, a spiritual, 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 commanded his disciples to break,
to eat, and to drink, in remembrance of him."§ The former is
then identified, as will have been anticipated, with Christ the Son;
it is the bread which is the Lord. The latter is only the ' ' bread of
the Lord. ' ' Once more, therefore, the whole question turns upon
the correct, that is the ' ' spiritual, ' ' understanding of the Scriptures.
Once more Schwenckfeld can refute the charge that he makes light
of the New Testament sacraments. "In the same way I request,
wish, and desire that the holy sacrament of the body and blood of
Christ be observed by the believing Christians according to the
institution, intention, and will of the Lord, with a right understand
ing, knowledge, and faith, also with a due examination and with the
due accompaniments, in a Christian, devout, and reverent manner,
and that it be not misused to condemnation through ignorance and
superstition. Whether this means rejecting the service of the
Word of God and despising the holy sacrament .... because I
distinguish between these things and the Word which is spirit and
* Cf . Schwenckfeld's remarks about the possibility and the need of an oft-
repeated "spiritual feet washing." "Die Ftisse der Christglaubigen werden
immer gewaschen mit dem reinen Wasser, das ohne Unterlass von dem Leibe
Christi fliesst" (A 209d). Again (C 207a), "Warum treiben sie"— he is speak
ing of the Lutherans — -"nicht auch so fest aufs Fiisswaschen? welches der Herr
eben so wohl als das Werk ihm nachzuthun hat befohlen: 'So ich euer Meister und
Herr euch die Fiisse gewaschen, ' ' ' etc. That is, if the Lutherans take this cere
mony spiritually, why should not the sacraments also be so understood?
t A 13d, D 147 285b.
X A 31cd; cf. B, Part I, 121d.
§ D 18ab.

30
life, I will now submit to the Christian Church, your grace, and all
pious Christians."*
But of course the really decisive question as to Schwenckfeld s
conception of the purpose of the sacraments is still to be raised.
His theoretical distinction, amounting in practice, as we have seen,
to a virtual separation between the outer transaction and the
inner reality in the Supper, satisfied neither the Romanists and
Lutherans on the one hand nor the Zwinglians and Anabaptists on
the other. Indeed, much of the persecuted man's literary activity
was due to his desire to remove the misapprehensions concerning
his views under which he was sure his opponents were laboring.
But in spite of his efforts in this direction, it is still to be regretted
that the inner nexus of his sacramentarianism has not been more
clearly set forth. For this obviously is the crux of the whole prob
lem: are these outer and inner circles of reality truly concentric, or
do they lie in such remote planes that all possibility of a causal
connection between them is cut off? Does this fundamental dual
ism result in an absolutely unmediated juxtaposition of altogether
disparate elements? Is there at the most only a possible simul
taneity between the external and the internal transactions? What
sort of balance must be struck between SchwenckfelpVs assertion
that the sacraments are serviceablea yet are not means of grace? Is
he thoroughly consistent with himself in denying the propriety of
the term Gnadenmittel in any and every sense?
How much injustice in this regard has sometimes been done to
the reformer will appear from our answer to these questions. It
is difficult to present his views with perfect accuracy and fairness
in any other than his own words. What he was bound by rigid
self -consistency to say is one thing; what he actually said in con
formity with his philosophic and theological presuppositions, on
the one hand, and under the influence of the conditions of his situa
tion, on the other, is quite another thing.
The external rites — on at least this point there can be no doubt —
are signs and symbols of the inner reality, of the truth, the essence,
the res or materia of the sacraments. This fact, it may be assumed,
has become plain in the course of the discussion. There are those
indeed who regard this statement as the only proper because (he
perfectly exhaustive one.f There can be no doubt that it is the
* D 545a.
fFor example, Hahn, Schwenckfeldii Sententia, etc., p. 60, n. 1: "Itaque
acramentis externis Schwenckf eldius putavit non nisi adumbrari res divinas
quas Christus omnibus fidem habentibus quovis tempore distribuit."

31
mould into which Schwenckfeld most frequently cast his reflections
on the teleology of the sacraments. With what sharpness of vision
he grasped this aspect of the problem will appear from a citation
of several of the most important deliverances. "All external
things are only representations which portray or point and lead to
the eternal divine truth which is dispensed through the custodian
of the holy blessings, through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. God is
therefore not concerned about external things, but about that which
is represented to the believer by means of the external thing and
which is distributed through Christ in the Holy Spirit."* Again,
"the sacraments are indeed spiritual or, if the term be rightly
understood, holy, sacramental signs, because they point to holy,
spiritual things and signify them. But they cannot impart them,
since they have no spiritual, divine power in themselves."! One
of the clearest statements on this phase of the subject is the follow
ing: "All external things, the sacrament and other things, were
instituted by Christ for our sakes, in order that his great benefits
and his work in the believing heart may be known and remembered,
and that the great riches of the grace of God which he has caused
to be manifested to all men in Christ may be known, praised, and
magnified in all the world."!
The external rite, therefore, has at least the function of directing
the thought of the participants to Christ, the sole source of saving
grace. But is there beyond this any necessary sequence between
the outward ceremonial and the bestowal of an inner sacramental
blessing? It is plain that some of the quotations just made leave absolutely
no room for an affirmative answer to this question. The unequiv
ocal declarations about the sole mediatorship of Christ must be
allowed to retain their force undiminished. That anything in the
way of a magical efficiency of the Gnadenmittel was to him an un
speakable absurdity; that salvation can, as a matter of fact, be
conferred without any means whatsoever by an immediate opera
tion of the Spirit upon the heart; that the blessings conveyed, ac
cording to the theories of his opponents, by the sacraments may
be daily granted even to those who do not attend to the outward
rites; and that the main current of Schwenckfeld's thought tends
to sweep away from the sphere of grace every sensuous, external
or "creaturely" object, — these propositions may be regarded as
established theses. But we must not prejudge the case by sup-
*A201d. t A749d;cf.A789c. JC580d.

32
dosing that he has reduced his views to a perfectly consistent,
unitary system. Granted, for instance, that the Spirit never
works through external things: it might still be asked, whether or
not he ever works in them or with them? There can be no doubt
that Schwenckfeld, in his strong desire to defend himself against
his adversaries by trying to conserve the objective or theological
content of the sacraments, did at times approach the Reformed
doctrine of the means of grace in the narrowest and strictest sense
of the term. The evidence, to be sure, is not abundant. The
language used expresses rather the feeling of a conservative dis
position than the settled conviction of a severely logical mind.
The principle is fairly established, however, that the blessmgs of
salvation are actually bestowed in the right use of the sacraments.
"This requires the right understanding and use of the sacraments
of Christ, that is the knowledge of Christ according to the Spirit
and the dispensation of the mysteries of God in the believing soul, it
being the special office of the Holy Spirit to distribute the blessings
acquired by Christ unto all believers in the use of his sacra
ments (beim Brauche seiner Sacramente), likewise before and with
out the use of them."* To be sure, even here the place of empha
sis in the sentence is reserved for the thought that the sacraments
are by no means necessary. Likewise characteristic is the differ
ence in the prepositions in the phrases "durch Christum" and
"beim Brauche seiner Sacramente." But the manifest coordina
tion of the two methods of bestowing grace, that "with the use
of the sacraments" and that ' ' before or without them, ' ' shows that
in some real sense external things may mediate grace. In another
passage we have not only the preposition bei but also in used.
"But if it is said that such grace comes through the external
thing, or that the external thing adds something in the form of an
instrument, or that the grace cannot be poured in or given without
the external thing, or that it must follow the latter, this is all pal
pable error. For, in short, the grace of God without and in the
external thing (ohne und beim Ausserlichen) alone effects salvation,
in both the sacraments and other spiritual transactions."! When,
therefore, the sacrament is truly used, it ' ' brings grace along with
itself."! * B, Part I, 85b. f B. Part I, 97d.
X "Dass aber die Sacramente Christi, wo sie recht verstandcn und gebraucht
werden, Gnade mit sich bringen ist wohl aus dem Exempel abzunehmen, so man
bedenkt, wenn ein Christglaubiger in der christlichen Kirche wird getauft und
ihm alle Wohl that Christi wird vorgehalten werden, dass er sich ganz und gar
Gotte aufopfert," etc. Ibid.; cf. B 15d, where it is said that the consecrated
bread "ought to serve the mystery of feeding upon the body and blood of Christ."

33
These citations, then, must be taken as an authentic commentary
on the numerous passages in Schwenckfeld that protest against
the Gnadenmittel. The common representation, that he taught
"a plan of salvation without the means of grace,"* must be
understood in the light of the fact that the sacraments when rightly
used may and really do convey grace.! Whether or not they may
be called "means of grace" will depend, therefore, upon whose
definition of the term we employ. Romanists and Lutherans will
alike answer in the negative.! But in a sense approximating that
of the Reformed Church, Schwenckfeld may fairly be said, in spite of
his protests, to have ' ' means of grace. ' ' His theory of the Supper,
as will appear when we discuss the question of the mode of Christ's
presence, is distinctively higher than that of Zwingli. § There is,
* So, e.g., Weiser, in his article on "Casper Schwenckfeld and the Schwenk-
feldians," in the Mercersburg Review, July, 1870, p. 150.
t The common representation is, of course, essentially correct, inasmuch as it
summarizes the content and also the spirit of the great bulk of passages dealing
with the subject. But by an occasional inconsistency Schwenckfeld permitted
himself to speak, as we have seen, in terms that compromised the rigor of his
system with affection for the time-honored institutions of the Church. His pre
suppositions forbade his making the sacraments means of grace; but the conten
tions of his adversaries on the right as well as his dissatisfaction with the fanatics
on the left, above all the overmastering force of the same words that held Luther
captive — the hoc est corpus meum — made him sacrifice something of his logic, or,
to use more customary but less intelligible language, his "mystical feeling,"
against external ecclesiasticism.
The practical question concerning the use of the sacraments has of late become
acute in the history of the American Schwenckf elders. The younger and more
progressive ministers especially are inclined to put a lax construction upon
Schwenckfeld's polemic against the "external" rite: they admit that the ex
igencies of debate betrayed him into ill-balanced assertions, but they are likewise
strong in their insistence that according to him the sacraments when rightly
used are "means of grace."
X Dollinger, Die Reformation, 1, 239 sq., declares that external baptism accord
ing to Schwenckfeld was only an outer reminder and confession of the inwardly
received grace; and that the external Supper is only a picture of the inward eat
ing. Kurtz (Kirchengeschichte, 9. Aufl., II, p. 150) says Schwenckfeld's doc
trine of the Supper is mere symbolism, a charge which the reformer times without
number explicitly denied.
§ Zwingli's statements on the eucharistic controversy present, as is well known,
marked contrasts. When governed by polemic zeal against the Romanists and
Lutherans he seems to deny that the Supper is in any sense a means of grace. Cf .
his Fidei Ratio, in Niemeyer's Collectio Confessionum, p. 24: "Credo, imo scio
omnia sacramenta tam abesse ut gratia conferant, ut ne adferant quidem aut
dispensent." The positive thought he most emphasizes is that the Supper is
"nihil aliud quam commemoratio, qua ii, qui se Christi morte et sanguine firmiter
credunt patri reconciliatos esse, hance vitalem mortem annunciant, hoc est.
laudant, gratulantur, et prsedicant' ' (De vera et falsa Religione, Opera, ed. Schuler
and Schulthess, III, p. 263). But it must be remembered_that he at times
taujjhtjiatjjhrist is truly pjesentui the^upp'er,..and that his body is truly eaten
by the believing heart. See p. 49.

34
in fact, so close a resemblance to the Calvinistic doctrine_that, with
all allowance for essential differences, the term "means of grace
may be applied with almost as much propriety in the one case as
in the other. Schwenckfeld and Calvin, in carrying beyond the
limits of the Lutheran movement the basal distinction between
Romanism and Protestantism, that pertaining to the way in which
the soul's relation to God is mediated* emphasized the possibility
and reality of the direct operation of God upon the religious sub
ject. They furthermore agreed in making the whole Christ the
res or materia of the sacrament, and in making the work of the
Spirit a distinguishing feature of their doctrine of the "means of
grace," thus aiming to do justice to the objective content of the
sacraments as taught by Romanist and Lutheran and the subjective
aspects championed by the Zwinglians. Above all, in their spiritual
view of the whole process of salvation, in which the sacraments
conveyed no unique grace not otherwise obtainable, faith was em
phasized as the indispensable condition for securing a dialectic and
causal connection between the outer transaction and the inner effect.
To be sure, Calvin succeeded in obtaining a far more satisfactory
because intimate nexus between the spiritual and the corporeal,
the divine and the human elements of the sacramental act, and
it was especially his clear recognition of the sealing character
of the ordinance that gave his views so speedy and complete a
victory not only over those of his theological kinsman Zwingli,
but also over those extremists like Schwenckfeld who belonged to
a more remotely related spiritualistic school.!
We are bound, therefore, to ascertain more exactly the nature
of Schwenckfeld's conception of faith. For it h obvious that it
was by this bridge that he sought to span the chasm that lay be-
* Cf Baur, Die Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, III, 254.
t Schwenckfeld never attained, and from his premises, as will appear, never
could attain, the high vantage-ground from which Calvin could regard the sacra
ments as seals of the new covenant. Lutheran writers, indeed, are wont to say
that Calvin himself was not warranted by his presuppositions in taking so ' 'high"
a view of baptism and the eucharist. See, e.g., Kahnis, Die Lehre vom Abend
mahl, p. 407 sg., and cf. Schenkel, I.e., I, 429 sq. The latter, however, admits
that Calvin has given the best solution of the sacramental problem (ibid., and cf .
p. XIX). But Schwenckfeld, as we shall find, was prevented by his conception
of faith and his theory of the deification of the flesh of Christ, from securing any
adequate view either of the work of the Spirit in the application of grace or of
faith as the instrument of salvation.
At times, to be sure, attempts were made to vindicate a sealing character for
the sacraments. See the Catechism of the Schwenckfelder Werner in Arnold,
Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie (1740), Vol. I, Th. II, B. XVI, cap. XX, p. 853. But
all such attempts really exceed the logical warrant of the premises of the system.

35
tween his desire to preserve the objective content of the sacraments
and his determination to hold fast to what he regarded as the
deepest essence of Protestantism, the sole mediatorship of Christ
operating directly, that is without the use of any creaturely ob
jects, upon the believer's heart. It is only by securing an adequate
grasp of his doctrine of faith that we shall succeed in doing justice to
his otherwise altogether anomalous position between the Romanists
and Lutherans on the one hand and the Zwinglians and Anabaptists
on the other. Only so can we realize how, in his eagerness to pre
serve the choicest treasures of the new evangelical faith, he took so
extreme a position against Rome that he found it impossible, save
by an occasional felicitous inconsistency of thought, to regard the
sacraments as anything more, in the actual life of the Church, than
symbols or means of representing spiritual realities to the physical
senses. Only so can we understand the logic of his oft-repeated
statement that the external rites must follow, and not precede, the
internal transactions.* Only so can we ascertain both the strength
and the weakness of his sacramentarianism and estimate aright his
contribution to the eucharistic controversy.
It becomes necessary, therefore, to introdifce that larger circle
of thought that lies behind and everywhere colors the more su
perficial considerations thus far presented : to understand his view of
faith we have to examine the philosophic presuppositions upon
which he based not only his idea of the purpose of the sacraments
but his whole conception of the nature of redemption. Concerned
as he was for the rights of subjective religion, finding as he did in
the spiritual knowledge of his Redeemer the only way unto eternal
life, how did he conceive of the nexus of faith by which the soul
is brought into contact with the supernatural source of grace in
the real or inward sacrament? By the necessity of the case his
conception of faith is influenced by his conception of Christ, and
his Christology in turn is inseparably linked with his doctrine of
the Supper. For him, as for all the participants in the eucharistic
controversy, there were in reality two closely related and decisive
questions: (1) What is the mode of the Lord's presence in the
Supper? and (2) What benefits does faith receive through or, as
Schwenckfeld would prefer to say, in the use of the sacrament?!
* See e.g., A 513c, B 601b.
t It was natural for the editor(s) of the fol. D to close the volume with
Schwenckfeld's two doctrinal summaries, often separately published, Ein Kurzes
Summarium von C. Schwenckfelds Glauben und Bekenntnis von Christo dem Sohne
Gottes and his Kurzes Bekenntnis vom HI. Sacrament des Herrn Christi Nachtmals.
On the necessary and close connection between the Supper and the nature of

36
The philosophic dualism underlying Schwenckfeld's system and
revealing itself in his Christology posits a twofold activity on the
part of God, that ofcreatipn and that of regeneration* The sharp
est distinction is preserved between nature and grace. "The
work of creation brings with it the presence of the power, might and
strength of God, with which God creates, fills and preserves all
things through his right hand, through his Word Christ 
Such presence is honorable to God, shows his majesty, power,
knowledge and government, that he is a Lord of all things, but it
is not specially comforting or salutary to the creatures."! In
contrast with this creative activity, which reveals only the pres
ence of power, is the regenerating or gracious activity by which
man becomes a partaker of the divine essence : "the other work of
God is the work of recreation, which God has exercised especially
in the sphere of human life through his right hand, that is through
Christ, upon the basis of the first work, and which he still exercises
and dispenses in the Holy Spirit. And it brings with itself pr&sentiam
gratim (that is the presence of grace) with which God is nigh unto
all those who call upon him .... and through which God's right
hand in the Holy Spirit cleanses, remakes and regenerates man,
in order that God may live and abide in him, being apprehended
by faith, and that man may become a partaker of his divine nature
and essence; 2 Pet. 1, Heb. 3. Such presence is honorable to God,
shows his mercy, friendliness and great love, and is salutary to the
•creature, a powerful comfort unto eternal life. "J Redemption is
in fact nothing but a deliverance both from the dominion of sin
and — what is really fundamental — from the very estate of crea-
turehood. § But how, then, must he be constituted who is to effect
so genuinely physical or substantial a transformation as that re
quired to make the sinful creature a participant in the divine life
and essence? If the Mediator is to .succeed „in__bringing man into
Christ's person, cf. also D 30b, 82d, A 727 sqq. and the many passages in which
he shows the relations of these views in the erroneous teachings of his opponents.
* Baur (Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit) , Dorner (Lehre von der Person Christi),
Hahn (Sententia) and Erbkam (Geschichte der prot. Selcten) have clearly appre
hended and more or less fully discussed the nature and importance of this far-
reaching distinction. The reader is referred to these works for a more adequate
treatment than we can here give of this aspect of the subject.
t See the whole section in Sendbrief VI, entitled Von zweierlei Werk und Gegen-
wartigkeit Gottes (C pp. 104-106).
X Ibid., p. 105.
§ It is Hahn's special merit to have established this point. See his disserta
tion, pp. 8, 21, 49 n. 3, 51 sqq. Hahn, however, underestimates the services ren
dered by Dorner and Baur in proving the central importance of the distinction
between "Schopfung" and "Wiederschopfung." Cf. Baur, Theol. Jahrb.,
1848, pp. 512, 524, et passim.

37
harmony with God, in spite of the fact that creature and Creator
are further removed from each other than heaven and earth,
wherein lies the capacity of the God-man to accomplish this unique
task? Obviously the traditional Anselmic view of the personal
union between God and man in Jesus Christ is not adequate to the
terms of Schwenckfeld's problem. For if, as we are told, sin per
tains to the very status of creaturehood, it is of course essential
that the Saviour should in no sense be a creature — not even,
Schwenckfeld insists, according to his human nature.* But, on the
other hand, it is equally necessary that the Saviour should be truly
man, that he should take upon himself the essence of our human
nature. How, then, are the two requirements — that of perfect
deity and that of perfect humanity apart from all creaturehood —
to be realized in a single and unitary personality?
Schwenckfeld's answer is highly ingenious, but necessarily unsat
isfactory; the primary dualism of his system, the very terms in
which the problem is stated, preclude any solution. Christ, we
are told, was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and by reason of this
supernatural generation he is said to belong to the order not of
"created" but of "begotten" or "re-created" beings.! He is
therefore truly divine, the Son of God, according to the very essence
of his being. But he was at the same time born of the Virgin
Mary;J from her he received his material, substantial body. § He is,
* The passages against the "Creaturisten" — those who held that the word
"creature" is applicable to Christ in any sense whatsoever — are innumerable.
Schwenckfeld's contention, when once his philosophic dualism was taken seriously,
had to influence his whole conception of the person of Christ and of the way of
salvation. See, e.g., C 806b, 809d, 814a, 823c.
f "Wiederschopfung," "Zeugen," "regeneratio" and "filiatio" are all
practically synonymous. They denote a supernatural communication of grace,
in other words of the divine essence itself, and may therefore be predicated of the
sinless Christ's humanity as well as of the redeemed. It is needless to add that
these terms have no reference to the eternal generation of the Son as the Second
Person of the Trinity: the point of contact between the Redeemer and his people
is to be sought not in the Mediator's divinity but in his non-creaturely humanity.
We have here a characteristic specimen of Schwenckfeld's attempt to theologize
on a strictly biblical basis; but into the familiar words of Scripture an entirely
new content is poured.
X More accurately — though the preposition "aus" is frequent enough — Christ
was born "in her and of her," but "outof God" (B 281c, and in the margin).
§ It is not the whole truth, therefore, when Hodge (Syst. Theol., I, 82) declares :
' ' His body and soul were formed out of the substance of God, " and that, according
to Schwenckfeld, Christ did not have ' ' any material body or blood. ' ' Schwenck
feld had no sympathy with the views i of_ValenriMs_ q^Melchior Hoffmann
(see~D426J B 163d, A 291, D 79d) . He taught that Christ did have a, real, mater
ial body in his humiliation, and that he even now, in his glorified or "deified"
bimajnJ^1^7fl^E5?SIi2^iI Cf. D 125d: "Ich glaube und bekenne dass
Christus Jesus auch noch heute und ewig ein wahrer, ganzer Mensch mit Leib,

38
therefore, God and man in one. But whvjs he. not then a creature?
The response is a double one : first, that the term ' ' creature ' ' denotes
mexely origin, whereas "man" or "humanity" or "flesh" denotes es
sence,* and secondly, that our Lord besides having a divine Father
had also a specially sanctified mother, a virgin upon whom had been
bestowed the gif t— the supernatural, the characteristically spiritual-
substantial gift— of faith.! But, as Dorner has pointed out,! this
is simply to transfer the problem from the constitution of Christ
to that of his mother. Th^solution cannot do full justice to his
humanity. § He is, after all, sui generis not simply as to his per
sonality as a whole, but even according to his human nature
alone. His flesh has_ a differen^rh|in^nd_ different capacities
from our own. Hi^Jlesh frojn the first is what, according to
Fleisch, Blut und Gebein ist in himmlischer Klarheit in einem unbegreiflichen
Lichte und Wesen." Rather is it the case, then^thatJ3hrist_had a species of
double corporeity — one bodily principle which owed its capacity for glorification
and progressive "deification" to the fact that it was essentially divine, and a
second bodily principle which was essentially human, derived from the earthly
elements of his mother's constitution. Cf. D 1, 21, 98, 498, and the many pas
sages that set forth the nature of the "Gottwerdung" of the humanity.
* Creature is not "ein Wort oder eigentlicher Namen des Selbstandes oder der
Natur des Menschen .... so es doch viel mehr ein Zunamen ist, dadurch
allein des Menschen Herkommen angezeigt und die Ankunf t des alten Menschen
wird bedeutet" (D 125b). And in the margin: "Creatura non est nomen sub
stantia rei, sed appellatio rei accidens, sicut nativitas, sicut filiatio, generatio,
etc. Ein Mensch sein sagt von einem Wesen; Creatur vom Herkommen des
Wesens." At times, however, Schwenckfeld seems to depart from the path of
strict consistency. Thus in D 254 he says: "Nach aller Schrift Zeugnis werden
allein zweierlei Wesen aller Dinge befunden: ein gottlich und himmlisch, welches
allein Gott und seinem Sohne Christus nattirlich zusteht, und wem er es aus
Gnaden will gonnen; das andere creaturlich und irdisch, in welches Wesen sich
auch Christus, der Sohn Gottes, seiner Exanition nach eine Zeitlang um unseres
Heiles willen begeben, da er Knechtsgestalt an sich hat genommen. ' ' But such
a vacillation, quite exceptional in any event, is after all more apparent than real:
the distinction between man as to his essence and man as to his origin may even
here be made. It was the only logical position for Schwenckfeld to take, if he
really meant to attach any importance to his singular idea of the deification of
the flesh of Christ.
t For Schwenckfeld's peculiar conception of faith, see p. 69 sqq. For the present
the remark must suffice, that the effects attributed to the faith of the Virgin
Mary have a striking analogue in the application of the same principle in the
sacraments: faith is the nexus between God and the human personality receiving
the supernatural grace. It is precisely here, as we shall find, that Schwenckfeld's
"mysticism" reveals its distinctive features most plainly.
X Geschichte der prot. Theologie, p. 181.
§ Cf. Baur, Theol. Jahrb., 1848, p. 520: "Da er seinem Ursprungund Wesen
nach etwas ganz anders ist als alle andern Menschen, so ist, was er Menschliches
an sich hat, nur_ein yerschwindendes Accidens, das ihm auch nur den Schein
eines wahren und wirklichen Menschen giebt. Eine wahre Homousie des Men
schen Christus mit andern Menschen konnte Schwenckfeld nich behaupten."

39
Schwenckfeld's "mystic" phraseology, ours may become after
¦"faith" has borne its perfect fruit — an essentially supernatural
and spiritualized flesh. There are, in fact, two kinds of flesh in the
sphere of human life: that of sin, inherited from Adam, and that,
resembling the former but dominated by grace, that is by the prin
ciple of the divine essence itself, which is a supernatural generation.
The former in the case of every believer is "re-created" into the
latter. In Christ alone, since the fall of Adam, has there been a
true humanity free from the principle of sin.*
The difficulty is only increased by the attempt to bring the unique
character of the Saviour's humanity into causal connection with
his mediatorial work in behalf of the race. For it is specifically
in the flesh of Christ that we must find his basal qualification to
be our Redeemer : the entire scheme of salvation is built upon the
principle of the once progressive, but now completely accomplished
deification of the flesh of Christ.
It is difficult to present this peculiarity of Schwenckfeld's system
in any other than his own words. His language places in boldest
juxtaposition the elements of what in reality is an irreconcilable
dualism. The Saviour is truly God and truly man, and yet his
humanity bj^bj^come _m^n§ strictest sense of the term divine.
This is the burden of countless christological utterances; the
author's language remains rigidly consistent in the assertion of
this absolute inconsistency. We must be content to let his
thinking rest in a formula which by every reasonable interpre
tation simply presents a contradictio in adjecto. The practical
bearings of this peculiar theory upon the two questions with which
We still have to deal, the mode of Christ's presence in the Supper,
and the benefits which faith derives from this sacrament, are so
important that we cannot forbear bringing the matter somewhat
more sharply to view. The following deliverance is typical:
4 ' When I say that Christ's flesh is deified, that his flesh or the man
Jesus of Nazareth by his glorification, ascension and primogenitura
from the dead has become God and a Lord of heaven and earth,
I mean nothing else than that the human nature in Christ has be
come altogether similar to the djyine nature in glory. I do not mean
* It is obvious that Schwenckfeld's fantastic distinction between the essence
and the accidental or creaturely origin of our nature is due simply to his errone
ous conception of sin as something inherent in our very constitution as creatures.
Cf . D, p. 107 : " Ja ob auch Adam nie gefallen ware, so waren dennoch seine Nach-
kommlingen von Natur, und alles was aus ihm den Ursprung hat, ohne Christum
und seine Gnade nichts denn Creaturen und natiirliche Menschen geblieben."

40
that the humanity in Christ is destroyed nor made into the God
head (noch zur Gottheit worden), but that the man in Christ can
now do all that God can, and that he in Christ's person, united
with the Word, is to be invoked, worshiped, and divinely honored
as much as God— one Christ, one Son of God, who is our Lord and
God absolutely."* In another passage, in discussing the words
Gottwerdung'md Vergottwng, he cites the fathers in his support:
"Thus the fathers mean by the deification of the flesh of Christ,
that it is poured through, shot through, irradiated and glorified !
with God and the Holy Spirit in all divine fulness— spiritu repleta
divina, says Ambrose, that it is completely filled with the Holy Spirit
and the divine essence and life; and as Cyril writes concerning the
sixth chapter of John, that not only the divine nature in Christ but
also the human regenerates, that the flesh of Christ has now assumed
the whole reality of the Word and attained unto the power of the
divine essence; indeed, that his whole body has been filled with the
vivifying power of the Spirit; haec ille. This we also call deification
and becoming God, that God in Christ, albeit in undiminished
human nature, is all in all, just as he will finally become all in all
in every Christian."! From this point of view he compares the
Lutheran preachers with the Arians : as the latter denied the deity
of Christ according to the nature of the Word, so the former deny
his divine glory according to the nature of his flesh. §
The above citations clearly reveal an apologetic interest in behalf
of the perfect humanity of the Redeemer. All, therefore, who repre
sent Schwenckfeld as teaching a conversion or transmutation of
the flesh of Jesus into the substance of the Godhead compromise
his eccentricities with their own conceptions of what logic would
have required him to say.|| Rather are we to think of this change
* D 514d. The subject is discussed with wearisome prolixity in the tripartite
Confession und Erklarung von der Erkenntnis Christi und seiner gottlichen Herrlich-
keit, in D, pp. 91-319, as well as in many of the lesser treatises of that volume, and
in numberless letters in the other folios. No other point in the whole range of
controversial discussion elicited from Schwenckfeld so many apologetic and
polemic writings; even his pecuhar views of the Supper could not be explained
without extensive references to this underlying doctrine.
tThe German compounds are scarcely translatable: "mit Gott und dem
heihgen Geiste in aller gottlichen Fiille ist durchgossen., durchfeuert, durchglanzet
und verklaret. ' '
J C 787c. §C 1008a.
|| Thus Klee, Dogmengeschichte, II, p. 41, says: "die menschliche Natur sei
in die gottliche umgewandelt worden." Kurtz, I.e., p. 150, is ambiguous: "so
dass im Stande der Erhohung seine gottliche und menschliche Natur vollkommen
in eins verschmolzen sind." Schwenckfeld is careful never to use the verbs
"umwandeln" or "verwandeln" or their derivatives, but only "wandeln" or

4L
as a gradual process, as the organic development of the essentially
divine principle implanted in his humanity from the moment he
was conceived by the Holy Ghost. The author is fond of present
ing this Gottwerdung of Jesus as the counterpart of the Mensch-
werdung of God*
In this progressive deification of the humanity of Christ there are,
moreover, two clearly marked stages: much is made of the differ
ences existing between the estate of the Saviour's humiliation and
that of his exaltation.! By pressing this distinction and yet
strongly holding to the unity of Christ's person, Schwenckfeld seeks
to break the force of the objection that his view of the origin of
Christ's flesh does injustice to the Redeemer's humanity, and that
his view of Christ's passion does injustice to the Redeemer's
divinity. For it must be remembered that no one was more con
cerned than he was to maintain the unity of Christ's person. Even
Luther's scholastic makeshift of the communicatio idiomatum
did not secure a sufficiently intimate union of the two natures.
Schwenckfeld wished to have every redemptive act referred to the
single divine-human personality and never to either of the two
distinct natures.! But how can the prime necessity underlying
Schwenckfeld's desire to have a real and essential union of God and

an equivalent; and in spite of all emphasis upon the oneness of Christ's person
there is no fusion of the two natures. To be sure, some of the figurative terms
employed might fairly be interpreted in that way, but such descriptions must be
read in the light of such explicit negations as the following (D 125d) : "Ich sage
nochmals, dass ich's nicht also halte als ob die Menschheit Christi sei zur Gottheit
worden, oder in die Gottheit sei verwandelt, wie mir etliche unbillig zulegen ....
(Ich) glaube und bekenne .... es ist seine Menschheit geandert oder gewandelt
nicht verkehret, noch verzehret, sondern gewandelt spreche ich, durch die himm-
lische Gloria gebessert und mit gottlichem Reichtum gemehret. ' '
* See the treatise, Dass Christus auch nach seinem Menschen der naturliche
wahre Sohn Gottes sei, p. F iiii; cf . B, pp. 132 sqq., Sendbrief XIII, Von der Mensch-
werdung des Worts und Gottwerdung des Menschen in Christo.
t Sometimes three stages are enumerated. Cf. e.g., A 712a, where — quite in
the style of his allegorical exegesis — the forecourt, the holy place, and the holy
of holies in the Jewish tabernacle are made to symbolize respectively (1) the in
carnation, passion and death of Christ, (2) his resurrection, and (3) his ascension
to heaven and session at the right hand of God. Usually, however, the last two
constitute a single idea, the second and final stage in the glorification. Cf. also
D, pp. 523-531, Summarium von zweierlei Stande, Amt und Erkennung Christi.
X Cf. D, p. 486 sqq., Von der gottlichen Kindschaft und Herrlichkeit des ganzen
Sohnes Gottes; ibid., 531-551, Drei christliche Sendbriefe von der Erkenntnis
Christi beide im Leiden und in seiner gottlichen Herrlichkeit; and the treatise, not
in the folios, Von der Ganzheit Christi beide im Leiden und in seiner Herrlichkeit.
Hence the insistence that Christ should be worshiped even according to his
human nature. See the treatise, Von der Anbetung Christi.

42
man in the Redeemer be fulfilled? If the unity of Christ's person
is to be preserved — and it was from this point of view and not from
the duality of natures that Schwenckfeld viewed the problem—
the only possible solution was one which could emphasize the close
ness of the union between the two natures only in proportion as
time was gained for this progressive development by magnifying
the difference between the first and the final stages in the union
between the Word and the flesh; that is, in proportion as the incarna
tion is conceived merely as the initial stage in a process that in
creasingly deprives the human nature of Christ, in spite of Schwenck
feld's protest, of what in the judgment of the historic Church
constitutes its characteristic attributes, till in the last stage the
very flesh of Christ has a glory indistinguishable from that of the
Godhead itself. After all, therefore, it is not real and essential
divinity that becomes incarnate in the historic Christ : it is rather,
in the first instance, only the germinal principle of divinity implanted
in a human (but non-creaturely) nature.* Nor, on the other hand,
can the deification of the entire God-man, including his humanity, be
taken strictly; for in reality it presupposes that the flesh of Christ
loses its distinctive properties and becomes essentially spiritual.!
It is, therefore, only by the sacrifice of some of the content of the
terms "flesh" and "divinity" that Schwenckfeld can vindicate
his peculiar doctrine of the "glory" assumed by the humanity
of the Redeemer after his resurrection and ascension. A single
passage may serve to give the tenor of many. "I repeat, the
Word became flesh in order that it might conform and render
similar to itself the flesh which it received into a union with itself,
in all divine glory, power, might, and capacity. But this did not
happen suddenly, all at once, at the moment of the physical and
temporal union, which afterward was destroyed by death, to be
followed, however, by a much more glorious and better union:
namely, an entirely new, enduring, and altogether divine union
and glorification which is to last to all eternity. Only then will the
flesh, as Jerome writes in connection with Phil. 2, be completely
united and deified, anointed through and through (durchsalbet) ,
and glorified by its union with God the Word in the heavenly es
sence and its transfer (Versetzung) into the glory and nature of the
fulness of the Godhead; only then indeed will the flesh be perfectly
glorious, divine, and spiritual, that is equal to God in honor,
* See Schultz, Die Gottheit Christi, p. 280 sq., for a brief statement of the strik
ing similarity between Schwenckfeld's Christology and that of the later Kenoticists.
t Cf . Baur Die Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, p. 242 sq.

43
power, and might; this I call the deification of the man Christ or
his becoming like unto God, or his perfect glorification."* There
can be no doubt, moreover, that the reformer's zeal in this mat
ter led him to put the centre of gravity of his whole system in the
work not of the earthly but of the heavenly Christ.! The summum
bonum, the indispensable condition of salvation, is the spiritual
knowledge of the God-man, the "King of grace," first in his
estate of humiliation and then, and chiefly, in his estate of exalta
tion.! The suggestiveness and worth of some of these christological
principles it would be idle to deny.§ The strong insistence upon
the oneness of the Redeemer's person, against the Nestorianizing
tendencies of the Zwinglians on the one hand, and the unsatis
factory unity based upon a community of attributes taught by
the Lutherans on the other, is the dictate of a sound and safe in
stinct. But his own construction of the biblical data was too
much the product of a mind which, in spite of its speculative acute-
ness and its marked taste for systematic thinking, lacked both the
logical vigor and the ethical insight necessary to trace his dualistic
principles to their last consequences. Governed primarily by the
practical considerations of religious reform, rather than by the
speculative interests of the scientific theologian; at times naively
faithful to the letter of Scripture, but more frequently yielding to
the charms of a spiritualistic interpretation, he was capable of the
boldest conceivable antagonisms of thought and language: Christ
* D 513, 514. Cf. the whole Sendbrief, Von seinen zwei Naturen, vornehmlich
von der Glorie des Fleisches Christi. In this doctrine of the "Verklarung" and
"Vergottung" of the Saviour's humanity lies the reason for the designation so
often applied to the Schwenckfelders, in accordance with their founder's wish,
"the Confessors of the Glory of Christ."
f But it is a mistake to suppose, as is often done, that he denied the fact or
the need of an objective atonement. Nor is such an extreme statement as that
of Hodge justified: "With him, as with mystics generally, the ideas of guilt and
expiation were ignored" (Syst. Theol., I, 83). In view of the many special
treatises written by him on the passion and death of Christ, the most that can
be said — and this must not be overlooked, for it is a characteristic defect — is
that "guilt and expiation," regardless of the amount of space devoted to them,
have no logical relation to his peculiar conception of the atonement. The ideas
were not ignored; they were misapprehended. They were biblical ideas and
were as such discussed; but they were, as will presently appear, really foreign
to the nature of his conception of salvation.
X C 475d: "Wer Christum in priori statu nicht kennt, wie kann er ad pos
terior em so bald aspiriren?"
§ Baur, Dorner, Erbkam, Schenkel, and especially Hahn have made it plain
that his speculations about the person of Christ by no means merit the sum
mary condemnation visited upon them by such a writer as Planck.

44
retains his true humanity, yet his very flesh is deified. "Christ
Jesus, I say again, with the testimony of Scripture, -has indeed two
natures: he is indivisibly God and man. But these two natures
exist in a divine, eternal life and essence, so that the life and es
sence of this man, now, after his glorification, ascension to heaven
and elevation over all the heavens, is not to be viewed and judged
as the life and essence of a man with a natural soul* — as human
reason judges and can never come to a higher knowledge — but it
is to be regarded as the divine life and essence, that of God, existing
in and like unto God."!
But our purpose in thus setting forth the salient features
of Schwenckfeld's doctrine of the person of Christ was none other,
it will be remembered, than that of securing a knowledge of the
principles that underlay the reformer's answer to the question
concerning the mode of the Lord's presence in the Holy Supper.
To this problem we now return.
There is much in the Christology of Schwenckfeld which logically
would have brought him into closest sympathy with Luther's doc
trine of the ubiquity of Christ's body.! P°r however sharply the
thought is emphasized that the flesh of Christ has been deified, it
is to be remembered that an equal stress is laid upon the confess
edly scriptural fact that the Redeemer retains his true humanity
after his resurrection and exaltation. § The apparent approxi
mation to Luther's peculiar view becomes even more deceptive
when we consider how Schwenckfeld interprets the term "the

* "eines seelhaftigen natiirlichen Menschen."
t D 844 sq. From the brief account we have here given of Schwenckfeld's
Christology it is easy to understand how he has been charged with such diverse
heresies as Docetism and Ebionitism, Nestorianism and Eutychianism, and, by
modern writers, with Apollinarianism and Kenosis. The verdict depends upon
what class of passages the critic is pleased to lay chief emphasis. Thus the
question of his Eutychianism has been variously answered. Hahn (p. 76) and
Erbkam (Geschichte d. prot. Sekten, p. 467) deny the charge. It must be remem
bered, too, that Schwenckfeld in numberless places repudiated the heresy. But
this is not conclusive. Dorner and Baur, accordingly, take mediating views,
denying that his teaching is to be placed on one and the same level with historic
Eutychianism, yet admitting the presence of the essential features of this error.
It is Baur who (Theol. Jahrb., 1848, pp. 527f.) calls attention to the similarity
between Schwenckfeld and Apollinaris. Dorner, in both of the works cited, seeks
to do justice to the disparate and indeed irreconcilable elements of the problem
as stated by Schwenckfeld, and gives on the whole the most penetrating and just
criticism. X Cf. Dollinger, Die Reformation, I, 241 sq.
§ The passages already cited will have made this abundantly clear.

45
right hand of God" as signifying Christ himself.* For if we
bear in mind how strongly the reformer insisted upon preserving
the unity of the Redeemer's person and the glorification of his
humanity, we might naturally expect to find the strictly divine
attribute of omnipresence ascribed to the very flesh of the Saviour.
And indeed precisely this step is taken. The logical consequence
of this fact, however, is explicitly denied. Christ in his undivided
and inseparable divine-human personality is everywhere present as
the "right hand of God"; but for that very reason he is above all
considerations of place.! Heaven, therefore, the abode of Christ,
is no locality — no "rdumlicher Ort," no "locus corporalis." Christ
is in heaven, but is not circumscribed. "Therefore we cannot by
the aforesaid text [Matt. xiv. 26] detract in any way from the
glory of the flesh of Christ and his spiritual nature and essence, nor
for that reason confine Christ to a spatial place, who to-day
reigns in all divine majesty, and needs no spatial place at all but
is exalted over all temporal places and conditions into God and
glorified, just as in the resurrection he easily penetrated every place
with his body."J
In spite, therefore, of the deification of Christ's flesh and the inti
macy of the union existing between his two natures, Schwenckfeld
was bound to differ radically from Luther in his conception of
the mode of Christ's presence in the sacrament. The precise
points here at issue will become more evident if, in setting forth
Schwenckfeld's answer to this decisive question, we reproduce the
polemic coloring that characterized his whole system of thought.
For after all Luther's doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's body was
* It is an interesting analogy that Schwenckfeld employs to body forth his idea
of the relation of the three persons of the Trinity. "Daher wird auch Christus
die rechte Hand Gottes des Vaters genannt, dass Gott der Vater durch Christum
im heihgen Geiste alles hat geschaffen; dass Christus der Sohn, das Wort, ja die
rechte Hand Gottes ist vom Vater als dem Haupte ins Fleisch ausgegangen und
hat darin und dadurch Erlosung gewirkt im Finger, das ist im heihgen Geiste"
(C 104) . Cf . in this letter the section entitled ' ' Wie Christus sitzet zu der Rechten
Gottes und was es sei " (pp. 106-110), and in the tract Apologia und Erkldrung der
Schlesier, etc., section 17, pp. G, Gi, Gii.
t "Esse ubi que est esse in toto, non in parte; est omnia continere, a nullo con-
tineri," D 257d, in margin. Cf. the section in the Confession (Part III) entitled
Vom Wesen des Leibes Christi in der Glorien und ob Christus nach seinen beiden
Naturen allenthalben sei, und was allenthalhen sein heisse, and the tract Verant
wortung und Defension fiir C. Schwenckfeld der Punkte und Irrthumer damit
ihn Doctor Joachim von Wat unrechi beschuldigt, especially paragraph 5: Dass
Christus nicht im Himmel als an einem leiblichen oder raumlichen Orte sitze oder
umschrieben. X B 238b.

46
only one of many causes that prevented the Silesian reformer from
identifying himself, in the eucharistic controversy, with any of the
recognized church parties or leaders.
We shall not need to dwell upon his absolute rejection of the Rom
ish theory of the Redeemer's presence in the sacrament. The mass
was to him an abominable idolatry* For him, as for every other
representative of a genuinely Protestant view of the Supper, the
bread remained bread and the wine wine.! Transubstantiation is
regarded as the figment of an unsanctified mind incapable of dis
cerning the spiritual content of the letter of Scripture.! The
Church may indeed present offerings to God, but they are the
sacrifices of praise and self-denial and service, not of the body of
Christ. § The all-comprehending objection to Rome's answer of
the question concerning the mode of the Lord's presence in this rite
is that the mass detracts from the glory of "the ruling King of
grace. "|| Christ is not in any such sense in the Supper that his
presence calls for a worship of the sacramental elements.Tf No one
can change the bread into his body; he is no longer under the
power of sinners.**
From what has been said of Schwenckfeld's objection to the
doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's human nature we are prepared to
see him oppose, in the second place, the Lutheran answer to the
question concerning the mode of the Lord's presence in the Supper.
We need not enlarge upon the data already given that showed
* See especially the four prefatory Sendbriefe in B and the immediately follow
ing epistles.
f Cf Baur, Tertullians Lehre vom Abendmahl .... nebst einer Ubersicht
iiber die Hauptmomente der Geschichte der Lehre vom Abendmahl, in Tubinger
Zeits. fur Theol., 1839, H. 1, pp. 107ff.
X Cf . B, Part I, pp. 8, 100, and B, p. 442c, C 77a, 969b.
§ B, pp. 11, 19f . Cf. the tract Von dreierlei Leben der Menschen, especially cap.
XX, Von dreierlei guten Werken des Glaubens und christlichen Lebens (D 673 sqq.) .
I| See B, p. 9, where this general consideration is resolved into fifteen specific
arguments against the mass, as follows:
1. Sophistica ilia transsubstantio panis in corpus Christi gloriosum. 2. Obla-
tio corporis Christi sub specie panis pro vivis et defunctis. 3. Trina corporis
Christi fractio et improbabilis applicatio. 4. Actionis Christi ipsissima perversio.
5. Peccatorum ficta per opus operatum remissio. 6. Hostise consecrate tanquam
idoli adoratio. 7. Christi regis infinite gloriae localis inclusio. 8. Pcenitenti®
per missam extinctio. 9. Ccenae dominicae abolitio. 10. Christi regnantis e
dextera Patris super altare eorum detractio. 11. Regis e regno suo characteris-
tica expulsio. 12. Verborum de corpore et sanguine Christi falsa ad panem
relatio. 13. Sanctorum contra sacerdotium et mediationem Christi invocatio.
14. Symoniaca missarum nundinantio et gratise venditio. 15. -Precatio cosca et
inhibita. U A 105a. ** Ibid.

47
how Luther in his doctrine of the sacraments, in trying to hold a
middle course between the Romanists and the fanatics,* was
compelled to approximate the former by the logic of his sharp
attack upon the latter. He not merely emphasized anew the real
objective content of the sacrament, but identified this content with
the material or corporeal presence of the Redeemer in a manner
that made it possible that the body of Christ might be ' ' distributed,
eaten, and masticated by the teeth" even of an ungodly and unbe
lieving man.! Schwenckfeld therefore rejects the Lutheran as
much as the Roman Catholic idea of the consecratory act in the
eucharist. "Therefore consecrare does not mean to convert the
earthly into the heavenly, or to transubstantiate. Nor does it mean
to unite one thing with another, as the Lutherans imagine, a sacra-
mentalem unionem panis cum Christi corpore, nor an impana-
tionem, eine Einbrbtung, vi verborum, .... but it signifies to
separate, to accept, by prayer to bless or consecrate something, to
give thanks unto God, to remember the benefits of Christ, as also
apud panem vel in pane eucharistico to celebrate the death of Christ,
to represent the heavenly reality, to praise and thank Christ for
his spiritual food unto eternal life. It does not mean to seek the
divine and heavenly in pane eucharistico, much less to regard the
bread itself as such."! As this passage indicates, Schwenckfeld
represents the Lutheran doctrine as teaching impanation.§ The
sense in which the term is used, however, does no injustice to the
peculiar views of this class of his opponents. For while he fails
to grasp the full significance of the active principle of faith in their
system, he clearly apprehends the inadequacies of their "sacra-
* Cf . Wider die himmlischen Propheten, St. Louis edition, Vol. XX, p. 251:
"Darum gehen wir zwischen beiden hin und machen nichts weder geistlich noch
leiblich, sondern halten geistlich was Gott geistlich und leiblich was er leiblich
macht. ' '
X See his "Bedenken" concerning union with the Zwinglians, dated December
17, 1534, in the St. Louis edition, XVII, col. 2052. Of course the Formula Con-
cordioe (Epitome, Art. VII, Negativa 21 ; Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, III, p.
146) utterly rejects and condemns "Capernaiticam manducationem corporis
Christi quam nobis Sacramentarii contra suee conscientise testimonium, post tot
nostras protestationes, malitiose affingunt," etc. But it was precisely with the
crass literalism of Luther that Schwenckfeld had to deal. Cf. C 236c. Par
ticularly objectionable was the statement in Luther's last Short Confession on the
Holy Sacrament that the bread in the Supper is the Lord's body, which the godless
man or Judas receives orally just as much as do St. Peter and all the saints (St.
Louis edition, XX, col. 1778). Schwenckfeld wrote a special treatise on the sub
ject: Ob Judas und die unglaubigen, falschen Christen den Leib und das Blut Jesu
Christi im Nachtmahl des Herrn empfangen.
t A 856c. Cf. C 148, B 53d, 61c, 143b.
§ Cf. also A 415b, B, Part I, 101a, B 38d, C 75c, 97c, 178ff.

48
mental union" between the bread and the body of Christ. With
whatever name he chooses to label the Lutheran doctrine,* he
reveals in his refutations a clear understanding of the precise
issues, as appears from his sixfold argument against the theory:
It is contrary (1) to the content of all Scripture; (2) to the nature of
the (eternal) Word; (3) to the character of genuine faith; (4) to the
kingdom, New Testament, and high priesthood of Christ; (5) to the
honor and glory of God; and (6) to the institution of the Supper and
the usage of the early Church.! The Lutheran formula "in, with,
and under" is condemned as an artificial interpretation of the
words of institution.! The Lutheran view is after all a prop for the
papacy. "For although Luther out of God's gracious revelation
pointed out many errors of the papacy" — in this sentence we have
Schwenckfeld's attitude to the conservatives on the right wing
accurately pictured — ' ' it was not given him of God to reform the
sacraments, nor to establish a united, blessed Christian Church;
he failed even to this extent, that in the article concerning the
sacrament, upon which the whole papacy and anti-Christian king
dom with its foundations, masses and other characteristics is dedi
cated, he only confirmed this Church, inasmuch as he fought so
violently in behalf of the papists, that every priest, no matter what
sort of man he is, might per verba consecrationis bring down Christ
from heaven upon the altar into the bread or under its form. ' ' §
It is plain, therefore, that, apart from all the christological diffi
culties involved, Luther's theory of the substantial presence of the
Redeemer's body was too gross and massive a literalism to suit the
spiritualistic presuppositions of a man like Schwenckfeld.||
* It is well known how the Lutherans object also to the term consubstantiation.
See, e.g., Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and its Theology, pp. 130, 339 sq.
et passim. But so far at least as Luther, Schwenckfeld's protagonist, is con
cerned, there can be no valid objection to the use of the term consubstantiation,
or even its partial equivalent impanation, provided only the idea of a local oi
physical inclusion of the material body of Christ be eliminated.
t See B, Part I, p. 18, and the whole of the first letter, Vom Grund und von der
Ursache des Irrthums beim Sacrament des Herrn Nachtmahls.
X "Etliche sagen er sei im Brot, Etliche unterm Brot, Ethche sagen er sei das
materiale Brot selbst, da man bald ihre Ungewissheit mag finden. Denn was in,
mit, oder unter einem Ding ist, kann ja das Ding nicht selbst sein, wie ihr wisset,
Es werden auch solche mit ihren 'in, mit, oder unter' durch die Worte 'Das ist
mein Leib* (auf welche sie dennoch fest trotzen) selbst tiberwunden" (A 415bc).
§ C 519d.
|| It is not necessary to make special reference to Melanchthon. Melanchthon
expressed a no doubt common judgment upon the Silesian when in a letter to
Frecht, of October, 1535, he called him "stultum magis quam improbum"
ICorpus Reformatorum, ed. Bretsclmeider, II, 955) ; and in 1556 his chief objection

49
But if the Romanists and Lutherans, according to Schwenckfeld,
practiced idolatry in the eucharist, Zwingli and the Anabaptists
made too little of this sacrament. Before setting forth his own
views, therefore, it may be advantageous to consider his objections
to the Swiss doctrine concerning the mode of Christ's presence in
the Supper.
The key to Zwingli's position is found, of course, in his symbolic
interpretation of the verb in the words of institution : est is equiva
lent to significat. The Supper is, therefore, primarily a memorial
of the Saviour's death, a symbolic act picturing this redemptive fact;
while at the same time stress is laid upon the character of this rite
as a badge of Christian faith and as a communion with Christ and
with the fellow-believers.* The Supper is a sign and seal of a
grace already bestowed, rather than a means by which to secure the
grace itself. It must be added, however, that Zwingli at times
unequivocally asserted the spiritual presence of Christ in the sacra
ment. To be sure his polemic attitude led him rather to emphasize
the absence of the Saviour's body, but the other positive factor is
not to be forgotten.!

was to the marvelous literary activity of the "hundred-handed" "Stenkfeldius"
and his "milites, qui ipsius nomine non solum scripta spargunt sed etiam sedi-
tiones movent, jactitant adflatus, et abducunt homines a publico ministerio et a
lectione et cogitatione doctrinse" (ibid., VIII, p. 740). Schwenckfeld in turn
simply identified Melanchthon with the Lutheran movement, and made no allow
ance for the mediating tendencies on the eucharistic question revealed by the
author of the Augsburg Confession in the edition of 1540. Nor indeed could
Schwenckfeld consistently have adopted even the latest concessions of Melanch
thon. For in proportion as the latter receded from his Romanizing position of
1530 and admitted the figurative interpretation of the words of institution, he was
simply transferring himself from one to another of the extreme parties between
which Schwenckfeld tried to maintain himself. For the condemnation of
Schwenckfeld by the Schmalcald theologians, including Justas Jonas, Bugenhagen,
Melanchthon and Amsdorf, and for Schwenckfeld's reply to their "misunder
standing' ' of his views, see C 691ff.
* Zwingli's eucharistic views are fully discussed by August Baur, Zwinglis
Theologie: Ihr Werden und ihr System. See especially I, 357ff., 427ff.; II, 298ff.,
500ff. t "Adserimus igitur non sic carnaliter et crasse manducari corpus Christi in
ccena, ut isti perhibent, sed verum Christi corpus credimus in ccena sacramenta-
liter et spiritualiter edi a religiosa, fideli et sancta mente, quomodo et divus
Chrysostomus sentit. Et haec est brevis summa nostra?, immo non nostra?, sed
ipsius veritatis, sententise dehac controversia" (Confessio ad Franciscum Fran-
corum Regem, in Niemeyer's Collectio Confessionum, p. 72). Adamson, The Chris
tian Doctrine of the Lord's Supper, p. 61, in his account of Zwingli's views, is
incomplete and even misleading; but he has done well to emphasize anew the
higher factors in this type of doctrine. Cf. also Ebrard, Das Dogma vom hi.
Abendmahl und seine Geschichte, II, 220 sqq.
4

50
From what has already been «said we are prepared to find
Schwenckfeld objecting to Zwingli's conception of heaven as a
locality;* to his strong insistence that the body of Christ, spoken of
in Matt. xxvi. 26, is that consigned to death and not the risen body,!
and to the rhetorical device, called ollo2osis,% whereby a statement
made concerning one of the two natures in Christ is to be referred to
the other without prejudicing either the unity of his person or the
distinction of his natures. But the chief objection was that against
the symbolic interpretation of the words of institution. Schwenck
feld here clearly discerned that the Zwinglian view embodied
a rationalistic tendency.! He complained that it reduced the
Supper to a meal that was nothing more than the manna or paschal
lamb of the Jews.|| In his judgment no symbolic construction of
the verb could do justice to the blessed but mysterious reality
of the sacrament, for which faith is the indispensable con
dition. In spite, then, of the points of contact between his
view and that of the Swiss 1— the points, namely, in which
both opposed the Lutheran and Roman Catholic doctrines —
Schwenckfeld never could rest satisfied with the primary considera
tion of Zwinglianism, that the elements after all only symbolize the
body and blood of Christ. By the ardor of his deep piety rather
than by the logic of his system, he magnified the reality of the
sacramental grace with a zeal that appeared all the more impressive
because his philosophic presuppositions seemed to annihilate the
external ordinance itself.
We need not adduce the scattered references to Oecolampad,
Capito and Bucer.** The first, indeed, emphasized the idea of a
sacramental nourishment, very much as Schwenckfeld did, and
considerably enriched Zwingli's refutation of the doctrine of the
corporeal presence in the Supper.!! But the solution offered by
* C 597d, 795b.
f Zwinglii Opera, Schuler et Schulthess, III, p. 523. Cf. Schwenckfeld's
Bekenntnis von der gottlichen Herrlichkeit des Leibes, Fleisches und Bluts Christi,
in D, pp. 263ff.
t A 597bc. § Cf. A 727b, B 240a. || A 667d.
If Zwingh himself (Opera, II, Abt. 3, p. 23), in his Vorrede of 1528 to Schwenck
feld's Anweisung, declares that the latter's views are not opposed to his own, but
rather included in them. He here tries to endorse Schwenckfeld's exegesis by
citing a Hebrew analogue. Cf. A 673.
** See especially A 673ff.
ft Goetz, i.e., p. 72 ; cf . Kahnis, i.e., pp. 332 sqq. Schwenckfeld even fancied that
his own view of the difference between the inner and the outer Word was shared
by Oecolampad. See C 336, where he approvingly quotes the Swiss reformer's
comment on Ezek. iii.

51
Oecolampad, that of interpreting the term corpus in the words of
institution as the equivalent of figura corporis, was not a whit more
attractive to the "Silesian than was Zwingli's. In his judgment
both deprived the sacrament of its deepest essence. Capito had, to
be sure, thoroughly approved of Schwenckfeld's doctrine as early as
1529.* The same is true of Bucer, who was displeased with Luther's
harsh treatment of the Silesian.! But later under Bucer's influence
Capito likewise became a bitter opponent of Schwenckfeld's
eucharistic (and ecclesiological) views.!
It is time, however, to let Schwenckfeld present his own positive
view of the mode of Christ's presence in the Supper.
He himself tells us at some length the facts concerning the origin
and growth of his peculiar doctrine. § Unable to believe, as the
Romanists and Lutherans taught, that even a Judas Iscariot could
eat the body of Christ, and unable to accept the positive elements of
Zwingli's teaching as sufficient, Schwenckfeld felt himself moved to
an independent study of the question which the Carlstadt-Luther
controversy had already made the most prominent issue in the
field of religious discussion. Being unfamiliar with Greek at that
time — it was the year 1525 — he submitted his views to his friend
Val. Krautwald, of Liegnitz. Krautwald at first sharply opposed
him, whereupon Schwenckfeld sent him some duodecim quoestiones
or argumenta contra impanationem.\\ Krautwald himself now
passed through an experience very similar to that of his correspond
ent: there was a season of profound intellectual and spiritual
anxiety concerning the meaning of the eucharist, when suddenly,
after three days' meditation and prayer, he received a divine revela
tion, ^ teaching him a new and more satisfactory interpretation of
* See the preface, by Capito, to the Apologia und Erklarung der Schlesier dass
sie den Leib und das Blut, etc., .... nicht verleugnen; el. A 673ff.
t Schneider, I.e., Abt. I, p. 9, and n. 15, p. 28f.
X Gerbert, I.e., pp. 188-193.
§ The leading passages are contained in C p. 24ff., C. Schwenckfelds Handlung
und Gesprach mit den Gelehrten zu Wittenberg .... vom rechten Verstande der
Worte "Das ist mein Leib," and C p. 20 sqq., Von der Offenbarung des rechten
Verstandes beim Nachtmahl und Essen seines Leibes (anno 1540). Erbkam,
Geschichte, etc., p. 370f., gives the gist of the narrative. Cf. Hampe, p. llff.,
Planck, V, 1, Buch IV, cap. 7, and Arnold, Kirchen-und Ketzer Hist., I, Th. II,
Buch XVI, cap. XX, p. 838.
|| C 22.
If We need not by this term understand anything more, in the case of either
Schwenckfeld or Krautwald, than the sudden enlightenment of the mind earn
estly seeldng the true sense of Scripture. For Krautwald's experience see the
letters written by him to Schwenckfeld and incorporated in C as Sendbriefe I and
II, and with this compare Schwenckfeld's story, C 22ff.

52
the much discussed words. Thus encouraged Schwenckfeld went
to Wittenberg,* to submit his views to Luther. The interview was,
on the whole, encouraging to the inquirer. But "about two
months later" Luther is said to have written him a sharp letter,
closing with the words: "In short, either you or we must be the
devil's bondsmen, because we both claim the Word of God in
our behalf."! Nothing daunted, however, the two friends con
firmed each other in their singular view and soon the break with
Luther was complete.
We may come to the heart of the matter by following the exe
getical arguments with which Schwenckfeld sought to buttress his
theory.! He inverted the words of institution and made the pro
noun a ' ' spiritual demonstrative, ' ' yielding the sense : ' ' My body
is this, namely, bread or true nourishment for the soul; my blood
is this, namely, drink or true refreshment for the soul. ' ' In support
of this exegetical device reference was made to countless alleged
analogous texts, as, for example, Gen. xvii. 10, ' ' This is my cove
nant, ' ' etc. ; Exod. xii. 27, "It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover" ;
Ezek. v. 5, " This is Jerusalem. ' ' § Kostlin is doubtless correct in
attributing the opposition of the Silesian to the figurative inter
pretation to the influence of Luther himself,|| since he had insisted
that even in such passages as 1 Cor. x. 4, " and the rock was Christ, ' '
the verb is to be taken literally so that the sense would be, Christ
* This was at least his second trip thither. The first had occurred toward the
end of 1521. Cf. Schneider, Uber den geschichtlichen Verlauf, etc., Abt. I, p. 4.
This does not, however, conflict with the more usual statement that the visit
occurred in 1522; for he stayed there at least long enough to attend the official
investigation on January 1, 1522, by Melanchthon, into the doings of the
Zwickau prophets.
t C p. 22c. Erbkam, I.e., p. 371 n., insists — following the Erlangen edition of
Luther's works (Vol. 53, p. 383)— that the date of Luther's reply was August 11,
1526, and that therefore the "two months" here named were in reality nearly
ten, inasmuch as the interview was held, according to C 24, early in December,
1525. (Goetz, I.e., p. 77, n. 2, wrongly represents Kostlin, Martin Luther, II2, p.
82, as saying that the interview itself occurred in December of the year 1526).
Enders, however (Briefwechsel Luthers, V, 338), and following him the editors of
the St. Louis edition (Vol. XXIa, p. 851), put the date of the letter in question at
April 14, 1526. Even so the term "two months" must be taken as a round
expression for four months. Moreover, the concluding sentence, quoted above,
is not to be found in that form in the epistle. Schwenckfeld must be understood
as giving merely the spirit of Luther's reply.
J The "credit" of the discovery belongs to Schwenckfeld; for its scientific
vindication, however, he was largely — at least until he became master of the
Greek language — indebted to Krautwald. Cf. Hampe, p. II.
§ Cf . A 704.
|| Martin Luther, IP, p. 83.

53
was really and truly the rock, namely that spiritual rock* In the
same manner Schwenckfeld now and ever after insisted upon the
literal interpretation of the verb and the "spiritual" interpretation
of the (predicate) pronoun "this."!
The rationale of this singular view must be found in the funda
mental dualism of Schwenckfeld's system of thought. There are
in short two kinds of bread in the Supper: the physical and the
spiritual; the bread of the Lord and the bread which is the Lord.
Each has its purpose : ' ' There are therefore two kinds of bread and
drink to be considered in the complete sacramental transaction of
the Lord's Supper, where it is celebrated with the right under
standing, faith, and knowledge, in the due course of grace : one for the
inner, the other for the outer man that believes. The inner or
spiritual bread or food, that feeds the soul, no one can give, as has
been said, save only Christ in the Holy Spirit; and this must under
all circumstances precede  Thereupon follows the sacra
mental, external eating to proclaim the death of the Lord and to
give thanks for his salvation and nourishment."! For this reason
the pronoun (hoc) is no corporalis demonstratio ad oculum, but a
spiritualis demonstratio ad intellectum.§ To these two sacra-
* The mere inversion of the words of institution ought not, of course, to be
regarded as an insuperable objection to the theory. Cf . Riickert, Das Abendmahl,
sein Wesen und seine Geschichte in der alien Kirche, who, though controverting
Schwenckfeld's interpretation, yet admits (p. 66f.): "Das griechische Pradikat
geht seinem Subjekt voran, so lange kein Grund zum Gegenteil ist. In so fern
hatte Schwenckfeld mit seiner Auffassung recht. ' ' And cf . Goetz, who declares,
I.e., p. 77, that ' ' die griechische Wortstellung in der Brotf ormel des Mt. und Mk.,
nur fur sich und rein grammatisch betrachtet, eigentlich die Deutung Schwenck
felds mehr begtinstigt als die Luthers, bezw. als die gewohnliche. ' ' In any event
the essence of bis exegesis is found not in the changed order of the words, but in
his interpretation of the tovto.
t He was thoroughly familiar with the fantastic view of Carlstadt, who,
emphasizing the difference in gender between the tovto and the aprog, de
clared that the former must refer to the Lord's body (aafia), and that the
Saviour when instituting the Supper pointed to his body as if to say : ' ' This (body
of mine) is my body (about to be) broken for you; this (blood) is my blood (about
to be) shed for you. ' ' See the excellent account of Carlstadt's theory by Gobel,
in Theol. Studien und Kritiken, 1842, pp. 329-354. For Schwenckfeld's brief but
adequate criticism of Carlstadt, see C 61b, C 175d (anno 1526), and C 566.
X B 72d. This is the burden of countless passages in the folios and the separate
treatises. Cf. B 564b on the Zweierlei Ordnung aller Dinge. In D 18 the dis
tinction between the inner spiritual and the outer physical eating is connected
with Augustin's distinction between the sacramentum and the res sacramenti. Cf .
also D, p. 897, Von den zweierlei Brod und Trank in des Herrn Nachtmahl. The
necessity of appropriating the spiritual before the material food in order to par
take worthily of the sacrament is emphasized in A 739a. The error of his oppo
nents is ascribed, as usual, to a lack of spiritual discernment in the reading of the
Word (A 657d, 670a). § C 134f.

54
mental realities, the spiritual content and the sensuous sign, more
over, the two declarations in the words of institution closely cor
respond: "This is my body," and "this do in remembrance of
me. " " We thus write and maintain, that in the complete Supper
of the Lord two things are to be found: one is that which the Lord
did and accompanied with appropriate remarks, when he took the
bread, gave thanks, and broke it and gave it to the disciples and
said: 'Take, eat; this is my body which is given for you'; and like
wise the cup. The other thing is that which Christ afterward com
manded his disciples to do when he said: 'Do this in remembrance
of me.'"*
As implied in this passage and frequently stated elsewhere, the
presence of the true and spiritual bread of life is the logical prius in
the whole sacramental transaction. And there ought to be no ques
tion about Schwenckfeld's wish to emphasize, with all the enthusi
asm of his mystic piety, the real presence of the Redeemer at his
table. For although this has been often denied,! the arguments
adduced only show that the reformer did not teach the corporeal or
bodily presence in the Roman or Lutheran sense. The Saviour is
truly or "really" present, though his body is not there either under
the "accidents of the bread and wine" or "in, with, or under"
those elements. "That the presence of Christ in the Lord's
Supperis not on this account denied" was a favorite thesis.! He
expresses his delight in the conviction of a correspondent, ' ' that in
the Lord's Supper his body, flesh and blood, indeed the Lord
Christ himself, is truly (wahrhaftiglich) and essentially (wesentlich)
received. ' ' §
The following passage will serve to show conclusively that he
held to what must in all fairness be called a true or actual or "real' f
presence : " [I believe] that the true body and blood of Christ is
vere present to faith in the mystery of the holy sacrament (if it is
observed and understood according to his institution). For that
reason, too, it is called by the Church ' mysterium fidei, ' inasmuch
* A 761d.
t E.g., Goetz, I.e., p. 75: "Auch Schwenckfeld verwarf, wie die Schweizer, die
wirkliche Gegenwart. ' ' So also Walch, Einleitung in die Religionsstreitigkeiten,
4. und 5. Theil, 1736, p. 1012: "In der Lehre vom Abendmahl laugnete er die
wesenthche Gegenwart des Leibes und Bluts Christi." Even Hahn, I.e., p. 14,
declares: "Apparet ex his, cur ne divinam quidem Christi naturam Schwenck-
feldius in pane atque vino eucharistico vere pra?sentem cogitare potuerit, non ex
alia nempe causa, nisi quod sint elementa creata, a quibus divina essentia absolute
sit separata. ' '
t B 74a. § B 119c.

55
as it is only by the light of faith that one can rightly understand
and celebrate the ordinance, and thus in the spirit of faith eat the
body of Christ and enjoy participation in him  [I believe]
that in the Lord's Supper, or in the mystery of the sacrament (as
the fathers call it), believers eat the body of Christ, not as a sign
or only figuratively, in thought, but vere, truly (wahrhaftig) ,
essentially (wesentlich), and in a sensible manner (empfindlich) for
the nourishment of their souls, and truly drink his blood in and
out of the living Word of God."*
These citations will have served to point out both the similarities
and the divergencies between Schwenckfeld's view and the views
of his various classes of opponents concerning the mode of Christ's
presence in the sacrament. On the one hand, the opposition to the
literalism of the Romish and the Lutheran doctrines must be said
to exclude every possibility of a corporeal presence.! On the other
hand, the points of contact with the Swiss or Reformed doctrine are
equally obvious. At first sight, indeed, it would appear that
Schwenckfeld's conception of the words of institution is virtually
the same as that of Zwingli or Oecolampad; that whereas Zwingli
introduced the symbolic principle into the verb (est), and Oecolam
pad into the noun (corpus), Schwenckfeld did precisely the same
thing by his ' ' spiritual, ' ' or let us rather say his spiritualistic, inter
pretation of the pronoun (hoc). It must be admitted, of course,
that Schwenckfeld regarded the sacramental elements primarily as
signs or vehicles of representation.! But while accepting in the
main Zwingli's anti-Romish and anti-Lutheran* interpretation of
the words of institution, Schwenckfeld cannot be said to have been
satisfied with the rationalistic spirit of the Swiss reformer's general
conception of the sacrament. Schwenckfeld's positive and most
* D 50 sq.
t "Wenn euch aber jemand sagte C.faspar] S.fchwenckfeld] untersteht sich zu
hindern dass viele Menschen nun nach erkannter Wahrheit das irdische, ge-
backene Brot mit dem M.fartin] L.futher] nicht fur Gott halten und al)g6ttischer-
weise anbeten, die Seligkeit dabei suchen, einen broternen Christum haben, dass
man die Menschen drauf weiset, da mochte ich gerne horen was ihr dazu wiirdet
sagen. ' '
X Schenkel, Das Wesen, etc., I, p. 558, even goes so far as to say: "Dass Brod
und Wein fiir Schwenckfeld keine andere Bedeutung als diejenige eines Dar-
stellungsmittels hat, bezeugt er schon damit, dass er sich gegen den von Luther
und auch den Vermittlern gebrauchten Ausdruck 'sacramentliehe Einigung'
(zwischen Christi Leib und Blut und den aussern Zeichen) entschieden erklart. ' '
But this would hold equally against the Reformed view. Moreover, the assertion
in this extreme form fails to do justice to the many passages, only a few of which
have been cited, that insist upon the true or real presence of Christ, not indeed in
a "sacramental union" with the physical elements, but in or at the Supper.

56
characteristic elements, therefore, such as his emphasis upon the
real presence and upon the profound mystery of the inner sacra
mental transaction, his idea of the nature of the blessings bestowed
upon the worthy communicant— in other words of the reality and
worth of the strictly objective content of the sacred ordinance when
rightly employed— suggest a comparison with the Calvinistic rather
than with the Zwinglian or early Swiss view*
For Schwenckfeld, like Calvin, taught an essentially figurative
interpretation of the words of institution" the difference being that
the latter made the verb and the former the pronoun bear a spiritual
meaning. Both insisted that the sacrament makes a real offer to the
communicant not merely of the body and blood of Christ but also
of his whole person and work, including therefore all the blessings
of his redemption.! For both faith was of such cardinal import
ance that, whereas the Lutheran and the Roman views taught a
real presence of the body of Christ in such terms as made it possible
even for the unworthy and the unbelieving to ' ' eat the flesh of the
Son of man and drink his blood, ' ' they insisted that without faith
the participants received only the signs and that to their condem
nation. Again, Schwenckfeld, like Calvin, not only avoided this
too intimate association between the sacramental substance and the
sacramental signs, but sought rather to lay all emphasis upon the
immediacy of the effect produced upon the believer by the entrance,
not into his mouth but into his soul, of the spbitual substance of
the Redeemer's body. Above all, Schwenckfeld, like Calvin, made
much of the glorified humanity of the Saviour, of his dynamic

* Cf. Hampe, I.e., p. 12: "so viel ist aber aus den kurzen Andeutungen wohl
klar geworden, dass Schwenckfeld ungefahr dasselbe lehrte, was etwa 15 Jahre
spater als Calvinische Lehre weite Verbreitung fand." Niedner, Geschichte der
christlichen Kirche, 1846, p. 676, n. 1, declares: "Es ist wesentlich das calvinische
Sich-erheben-lassen des glaubigen Geistes zu der vergotteten [this last word is not,
of course, to be understood as referring also to Calvin's christology] Menschheit
Christi, durch die Allgegenwartigkeit seines heihgen Geistes; also ohne eine ort-
liche Selbstversetzung entweder des Menschengeistes in den Himmel oder des
Christusleibes auf die Erde. ' ' It must be remembered, however, that Schwenck
feld objected as much to Calvin's as to Zwingli's figurative interpretation of the
verb est. Cf . C 524, where the two are placed together for criticism. Logically,
however, his protest against the figurative interpretation is not warranted: we
find here another illustration of the discrepancy between his negations and his
affirmations. X Schwenckfeld's doctrine of the true bread of life has made this clear. The
point will be more fully discussed in connection with the question of the benefits
to be derived from a right use of the sacrament. For Calvin's views, see his
Institutio, Lib. IV, especially c. XVII, sections 10-18.

57
presence in the Supper, of that divine energy that emanated from
the body of the exalted Lord of life*
In this virtually Calvinistic sense, therefore, Schwenckfeld
taught a true or real presence of Christ in the eucharist. A number
of further similarities between his view and that of the Reformed
leaders will emerge when we now consider his response to the
second specific question which engaged the minds of the sacra
mentarian controversialists of that day, namely, What are the bene
fits to be derived from the right use of the sacred institution? The
answer has already been given by way of necessary implication.
But a more adequate discussion of this point will reveal additional
characteristic elements of Schwenckfeld's system of thought.
We have seen how his fundamental dualism affected his
conception of the nature of the sacraments in general and, in
particular, of the mode of Christ's presence in the Supper. There
is an outer and there is an inner transaction; a physical or earthly
bread and wine, and a spiritual or heavenly bread and wine : and
corresponding to these there is a carnal eating and drinking, and
there is a spiritual eating and drinking. And it is obviously with
these subjective acts, these assimilative processes that we must
now concern ourselves, if we would ascertain the benefits imparted
to the worthy or believing communicant.
Here, as elsewhere, we find Schwenckfeld not only acquainted
with the theological battle-cries of the day but thoroughly domi
nated by their influence ; but here, as elsewhere, his use of them is
peculiar to himself. In harmony with his view of the eucharist as
a double reality he distinguishes between two generic kinds of bene
fits, those derived from the outer ceremony and those derived from
the inner mystery. The external act or the commemoratio, whereby
* The mystical features of Calvin's doctrine of the eucharist are as difficult to
understand as are Schwenckfeld's peculiarities. Ebrard, Das Dogma vom hi.
Abendmahl, II, 458 sqq., gives what must doubtless be regarded as the fittest
solution of the problem, when he shows how the substantia of Christ's presence in
the Supper denotes, according to Calvin, not the material substance of his body,
but that "essence of the glorified Christ" which is to be conceived primarily as a
power, an energy, an "actus in actu non extensum in extenso." The similarity
on this point between Calvin and Schwenckfeld is most striking. But there is a
difference. Calvin never allows, as Schwenckfeld does, the glorification of the
Redeemer's human nature to amount to a "deification." Moreover, closely
connected with this is the fact that Calvin represents the Holy Spirit as the
mediator of the spiritual blessings, whereas Schwenckfeld, with a consistent
regard for his mystical, physico-spiritual presuppositions, was rather inclined to
ascribe this office to the deified God-man in his own person. On the mystical
elements of Calvin's doctrine of the Supper, compare also Andr6 Duran, Le
Mysticisme de Calvin, pp. 62ff.

58
the Saviour's death is proclaimed, is at the same time a symbol of
that internal act, the manducatio, by which faith appropriates the
blessings of salvation. "These two (namely manducatio and
commemoratio) must be well distinguished in a divine transaction
and not be confounded. The eating takes place internally and, as
has been said, out of the living Word of God  The com
memoration takes place outwardly in the breaking of the bread of
the Lord. The eating precedes; the commemoration and thanks
giving follow. He who has not eaten and had enough cannot truly
give thanks. ' '*
The external rite, then, has primarily a didactic or demonstrative
value.! "The broken bread teaches, explains, and represents the
nature of the body of Christ that was given and broken for us."!
Thus the external rite, though clearly subordinated to the inner
mystery, nevertheless performs an important service. §
Obviously, therefore, the real question concerns the nature of
this act of manducation|| typified in the outward ordinance. And
here the significant fact is to be noted that, contrary to the prevail
ing views of the time, Schwenckfeld not only took his point of de
parture for the interpretation of the words of institution from the
sixth chapter of the Gospel according to John, but made this dis
course refer directly to the Lord's Supper as the fourth evangelist's
contribution to our knowledge of the euchari.st.1f To him it was
no accident that the most mystical of the New Testament writings
contained the key to the solution of the problem of the festal
' ' mysterium. ' '** There is indeed a corporeal or carnal eating of the
physical bread itself; but there are no two ways — as Luther claimed
*B 131a. Cf. the oft-repeated remark: " 'Das ist' gehet vor; 'das thut'
folget." t Schwenckfeld did not reject Zwingli's idea that the sacraments are badges of
the Christian man's faith. But he had too httle interest in the external signifi
cance of the rites to emphasize this merely professional value.
X A 399d, in the margin. Cf. Schenkel, I.e., I, 560, n. 1, for the remarkably
similar view of Servetus.
§ Cf. A 857b: "Es bringt gemeldete Rememoratio oder Wiedergedachtnis mit
Ruminationem et repetitionem omnium benefidorum Christi. Ita saturatur fidelis
anima et manducat corpus Christi pro se traditum et bibit sanguinem pro se effusum."
|| The term is also used synecdochically to include the "drinking of the blood' '
of Christ.
If Zwingh of course had insisted upon using this chapter as a guide ; especially
v. 63, " the flesh profiteth nothing ' ' ; but he did not suppose that the passage had
a primary reference to the Supper. Cf . Baur, Zwinglis Theologie, II, pp. 296 sqq.,
318, 592 et passim.
** See the treatise, Eine schbne und herrliche Auslegung iiber das ganze sechste
Capitel Johannis von der Speise des ewigen Lebens, especially pp. 126ff. (ed. 1595).

59
there are — in which the body of Christ can be eaten, a "spiritual"
and a "sacramental" manducation. For, according to Schwenck
feld, the body of Christ is a purely spiritual food, and hence whether
it be eaten in the sacrament or, as was possible, apart from these
elements, the process must be a spiritual one.* Wherever, then,
the communicant by faith appropriates the spiritual realities
present to the believers at the Lord's table and typified by the
sensible signs, he is eating the true bread of life, which is the flesh
and blood of the Son of God. In effect, therefore, Schwenckfeld
here concedes, with Zwingli and the Reformed theologians, that
eating is a tropical expression for "believing."! The larger
question accordingly becomes the more precise one : What are the
redemptive benefits which faith receives in the Gospel, whether with
or without the use of the sacraments?
The answers are given in various terms. In the following passage,
e.g., the language approximates that commonly used to set forth
the evangelical conception of the work of Christ: "Therein," i.e.,
in the body and blood of Christ, the Christian "receives nothing
other than divine righteousness, grace, the Holy Ghost, forgiveness
of sins, peace of conscience, and much spiritual joy continually in
his heart  He who receives the body of Christ through
faith, receives also the Spirit of Christ who keeps urging him unto
all good."! At other times, however, we have the peculiar
indefiniteness of his mystical or physico-naturalistic conception:
"He who eats the flesh of Christ partakes of the divine nature,
flesh of flesh, bone of bone. He who eats the flesh of Christ
eats life, that eternal life which begins in man here and pre
serves the soul from eternal death, so that this food will again
produce the flesh of man, in a glory equal to that of the soul, at the
final resurrection, and rescue and keep body and soul from eternal
death. "§
* Cf . B 140 sq. There is therefore no unique or special way of feeding upon
Christ in the sacrament. The term "sacramental eating" must be equated
either with the merely physical act of partaking of the eucharistic elements, or
else — it is after all only a question of the absence or presence of faith — with that
spiritual manducation which is, according to Schwenckfeld, the only possible way
of feeding upon Christ's "flesh.".
t Of course Calvin (Institutio, IV, c. XVII, 5; Allen's translation, II, p. 529)
regarded the eating rather as a "fruit and effect" or "consequence" of faith,.
though he admitted that the manducation can be by faith only. But the differ
ence between Calvin's personal views and those of the Reformed symbols on
this point is a negligible quantity.
X A 331.
§ Auslegung des sechsten Capitels Joh., p. 175. Luther himself had taught that
a physical or magical benefit might be derived from the eucharistic meal to insure

60
It is possible, however, to obtain more specific answers than either
of these to the question concerning the blessings received by faith,
whether in the use of the Supper or not. Our limits forbid a full
discussion of Schwenckfeld's soteriology, but it is necessary to set
forth at least the general principles of the subject as they bear upon
the point in controversy.
We must revert to the basal fact of the two so diverse estates in
which the Saviour performs his mediatorial services; in other words,
the central importance of the resurrection of Christ must be clearly
apprehended.* The earthly work of Jesus is to be regarded as the
basis and the preparation for his heavenly work. The former is to
be designated as the work of acquiring, and the latter as the work of
distributing, the redemptive blessings.! All grace is therefore now
to be found in the risen and glorified Christ. Sometimes, indeed,
this thought is presented in a way which apparently robs the ob
jective atonement of its intrinsic value, or which, to speak more
positively and at the same time to relate the fact to his philo
sophic presuppositions, apparently transmutes the physical reality
of the Redeemer's body into a spiritual substance to be mediated
to the believer by the Holy Spirit.! Ordinarily, however, the work
of Jesus on earth is regarded rather as a preparation for his more
important service in heaven as ' ' the ruling King of grace. ' ' The
centre of Schwenckfeld's system of thought must unquestionably be
found in the mediatorial work of the exalted, i.e., the completely
deified God-man. § From this point of view the Gospel message
the bodily resurrection at the last day. Cf. Thimme, Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift,
1901, p. 890. But in his later treatises this consideration was not dwelt upon,
a point which Muller emphasizes in his endeavor to approximate the teachings of
Luther on this question to those of Calvin (see his Dogmatische Abhandlungen, p.
417). * On this general subject, see D 239 sqq., 465 sq., 507, 527, 825 sq.
t For the proofs we may refer to the admirable section, "De opere Christi, ' ' in
Hahn, I.e., pp. 52ff. Besides the passages there cited, see D 103, A 694, 861,
and B 591. Luther had early developed the same mode of representation. See
his Wider die himmlischen Propheten, St. Louis edition, XX, col. 275: "Von der
Vergebung der Sunden handeln wir auf zwo Weisen: einmal wie sie erlangt und
erworben ist, das andermal wie sie ausgetheilt und geschenkt wird. ' '
X Cf . A 696c, C 943d. «.
§ Schwenckfeld's emphasis upon the post-resurrection activities of the Lord
contained many a corrective suggestion for the one-sided treatment that Luther,
in the interests of his forensic justification, was prone to accord to the earthly life
of the Saviour. Schwenckfeld made much of the two texts: ' 'Jesus our Lord
who was delivered up for our trespasses and was raised for our justification"
(Rom. iv. 25), and ' 'Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh: even
though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no more"
(2 Cor. v. 16). On the common perversion of this last text by mystical interpre
ters, see Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 69 sq.

61
is represented as being composed of two unequal but vitally con
nected portions. There is the milk for babes and the strong meat for
adults; there is the word of the cross, and there is the word of life.
' ' The sum of the Gospel is in the Word of the cross and the Word
of life. By the Word of the cross is understood the entire mystery of
the crucified Christ and the entire transaction of all that which
Christ the eternal Son of God became for our sakes, that he accom
plished, earned, and effected by the bitter death of the cross,
namely, his salvation, reconciliation, self-sacrifice, and satisfaction
for sin and the forgiveness of the same; while the Word of life
denotes the whole mystery of the glorified Christ and eternal life^
the whole work of our justification and salvation, and all that
Christ after his ascension to heaven and entrance into the kingdom
of God effects in believers through the Holy Ghost, and how he
after accomplishing our salvation upon the cross now brings us to
his heavenly kingdom unto eternal salvation."*
It is obvious from the passage just cited that Schwenckfeld
infused a new meaning into some of the formulas employed to
designate the blessings of the Gospel. The peculiarities of his sys
tem, from this point of view, may be briefly indicated by referring
to his statements concerning the three specific terms, redemption
(Erlosung), regeneration (Wiedergeburt) , and justification (Gerecht-
machung).\ Redemption is primarily, as in the early patristic conception, a
deliverance from the power_of Satan. By his death on the cross
Christ overcame the archfiend of the human race,! and by his
resurrection he made it possible that man, having been freed from
the dominion of the devil, should become positively capable of
triumphing over his foes by virtue of a gradual deliverance from
the estate of creaturehood itself. §
This last phase of redemption, however, belongs rather to the
specific doctrine of regeneration. And here, even more than in
the case of the somewhat negative consideration of our being
"bought off" from Satan by the ransom of the divine King's life,
* D 348 sqq. Concerning the terms ' 'milk" and ' 'strong food, ' ' and concern
ing the insufficiency of the former, which signified only a historical knowledge of
Christ, and the absolutely indispensable character of the latter for the truly
' 'spiritual knowledge" of Christ, see C 898, D 286 sq., 587 sqq., 895 sqq., A 471-476.
t In what immediately follows we are drawing from Hahn, op. cit,, 51 sqq., who
has with admirable clearness, brevity and accuracy reproduced Schwenckfeld's
soteriological principles.
X A 716c, D 435, 463, 742f . Cf. Baur, Lehre von der Versohnung, p. 462n.
§ D 467 sq.

62
the emphasis must be placed upon the distributing, as distinguished
from the acquiring, activity of the Redeemer, i.e., upon his
heavenly as distinguished from his earthly work. The act of regen
eration or "re-creation," whereby the believer receives the divine
principle of the spiritual life, is the beginning of the saving process
on its subjective side. It would be easy, of course, to cite passages
which, taken apart from their contexts and from the philosophic
presuppositions upon which they are based, would appear to be in
fair harmony with the general evangelical or Protestant view of his
opponents concerning the initial act in the salvation of man. The
following is a typical deliverance of this sort : ' ' Thus regeneration
is an incipient work of God, which he of his pure grace and mercy
performs without any merit on our part in dead, corrupt man for his
quickening, righteousness, and salvation; in which work God the
merciful awakens man from spiritual death through his living
Word, Jesus Christ, changes the old nature with a heavenly new
ness, converts the sinner, begets for himself children and heirs of his
kingdom; in which he also grants ears to hear, eyes to see, and an
open heart to understand, and through Jesus Christ, in the Holy
Spirit makes the evil and unrighteous man pious, holy, and right
eous."* But the rationale of this regenerative process clearly
evinces the extent to which Schwenckfeld compromised his biblical
formulas with his spiritualistic principles. This will become the
more evident when we interrogate him on the question which, as
we have seen, was for him, no less than for Luther, central
in the practical religious life of that day — the question of
' ' justification by faith. ' ' For it was precisely in his conception of
both "justification" and "faith" that Schwenckfeld developed
to their logical consequences the essentially "mystical" principles
of his system.
To be sure, he sought here as elsewhere to defend himself against
the logic of his novel assertions. Therefore, on the one hand, he
rejected altogether the Romish idea of meritorious works,! and, on
the other, he sought to conce_de. as much as possible to Luther's
doctrine of forensic justification. He made much of the passion
and death of Christ as the only ground of our reconciliation with
God. Such language as the following is by no means exceptional:
' ' This indeed is the joy of our hearts, that if we in faith think of his
satisfaction, our consciences are quieted and put at ease. And to
* D 606a. Cf . the whole section, Was ist denn eigentlich die Wiedergeburtt und
wobei soil sie erkannt werdent
t See, e.g., D 653, 657.

63
celebrate the Lord's Supper, to eat and drink his blood, signifies the
awakening of the believing hearts by the Spirit, so that they per
ceive the benefits of Christ, remember, inwardly experience, and
consider them, and with hearty thanks put his wounds upon their
wounded souls and consciences as a salutary plaster."* The
blood of Christ is the pledge of our redemption.! The Saviour died,
the just for the unjust, having become a curse for us.! It is there
fore an erroneous representation which declares that Schwenckfeld
absolutely denied the imputed righteousness of Christ. § The fol
lowing citation may serve to show how freely Schwenckfeld could
use the orthodox phrases: "The righteousness of God is nothing
but the perceiving, grasping, and appropriating of such grace in
Christ through faith  Only that grace purifies by which
our sins are not imputed to us."||
But if Schwenckfeld did not in practice deny imputed righteous
ness to the believing sinner, yet in theory, that is by the logic of
his system, he was compelled to do so. The historical situation
had here, too, done its part to force him into an extreme position
where, in spite of his good intentions, he could not maintain him
self in harmony with the Protestant leaders.^ In his eagerness to
*A379b;cf. A 243, 269.
t A 301b, D 460. To be quite accurate, however, it must be added that the
historic bloodshedding is always to be followed by the ' 'spiritual' ' effusion of the
Saviour's blood in his heavenly activities. Cf . D 102 sqq., 287, and C 943.
X A 44b, 301a, 289d.
§ Baur, e.g. (Lehre von der Versohnung, p._462), says Schwenckfeld sub
stituted essential for imputed righteousness. Ritschl (Rechtfertigung u. Ver
sohnung, I3, p. 319) likewise asserts, "dass Schwenckfeld von einer angerechneten
Gerechtigkeit nichts wissen wollte." But Hahn, I.e., pp. 61ff., gives a more
accurate statement. In strict consistency Schwenckfeld ought to have denied
all imputed righteousness ; but all attempts thus to measure him by the test of
other fixed systems of theological opinion are sure to do the reformer injustice by
failing to take account of some minor yet most highly characteristic and therefore
important details. Consider, e.g., the following statement, quoted by Hahn from
A 283: "Siehe Rom. 14; was unsere Gerechtigkeit sei, und dass der allein gerecht
ist, welchem um des Glaubens Christi willen seine Stinden nicht werden zugerech-
net. Christo wurden unsere Stinden zugerechnet, da er fur uns am Kreuz eine
Maledeiung ward, des geniessen wir noch heute. " Dorner (Geschichte d. prot.
Theologie, p. 178) gives a characteristically fair judgment: "Ebenso will er zwar
Christi Leiden ganz und gar mit der Kirche seine versohnende Bedeutung lassen;
aber erinnert, dass man nicht scheiden durfe zwischen Christi Person und
Verdienst. ' '
|| A 8. Cf. Schenkel, Das Wesen, etc., II, 287.
"J Cf. Erbkam, Geschichte d. prot. Sekten, pp. 437 sqq., for a criticism of the
popular Lutheran conception of justification by faith. There can be no doubt
that much occasion for offense was given bythe new "indulgences" to be
obtained from unworthy Lutheran pastors in connection with the administration
of the Lord's Supper. Cf . A 411b, and Dollinger, Die Reformation, I, 257ff.

64
magnify the grace of Christ as against all religious externalities,
and especially because of his zeal for the fruits of faith in holy living,
he not only widened the idea of justification so as to make it include
sanctification, but also, as we shall have occasion presently to ob
serve, deepened the conception of faith so as to make it a sub
stantial, we may even say a physico-spiritual, bond between the
righteous God and the sinful soul. We read: "In fine, we are
assured by Holy Scripture, thanks be to God, that justificatio in
Paul denotes a making righteous; justificare, to make righteous;
and justitia Dei, the righteousness of God, that is, the goodness and
godliness of the faithful God, which he here imparts to his elect by
faith through Christ in the Holy Spirit. ' '* Once more all stress is
laid upon the mediatorial reign of Christ in his exaltation and
glory. In fact the primary difference between his and the orthodox
view of justification concerns the basis or ground, rather than the
mere extent, of this act, or, as he would prefer to say, this work.
' ' And in short we must not seek our becoming righteous and our
righteousness in Christ according to his (earthly) estate in a purely
historical manner, but according to his other estate, wherein he has
now been glorified and eternally equipped and appointed by God
the Father to be the dispenser of the heavenly blessings and the
head of the Church. ' '! Schwenckfeld at times bravely endeavored
to preserve the truth of the forensic conception and its correlate, the
doctrine of an imputed righteousness, yet the logic of his system,
the consequence of his central idea of the deification of Christ's
flesh as the indispensable bond of union between the creature and
the holy Creator, conrpelled_him to admit : ' ' God considers no one
righteous in whom there is nothing at all of his essential righteous
ness.' '! While , therefore, he had a profoundly ethical view of sin
and of the need of its expiation, he was yet more concerned for the
subjective appropriation of divine grace than for the merely ob
jective and forensic act whereby, according to his opponents, guilt
is remitted and a title to eternal life is granted to the believer. §
* D 484f. For Schwenckfeld's conception of faith, see pp. 69 sqq.
X D 485. Cf. Hahn, I.e., p. 64: "Itaque solum glorificatum Christum putavit
justificationis nostra? f undamentum. ' ' On the similarity in this and other respects
between Schwenckfeld and Osiander, as well as for the differences between the
two, see Hahn, ibid., pp. 63-70; Erbkam, I.e., p. 443; Baur, Lehre von der Ver
sohnung, pp. 326ff., 340ff.; and Schwenckfeld, C 942 sq. J A 812c.
§ It is perfectly in accord with the facts, therefore, when Hahn (I.e., p. 55, n. 3)
and Ritschl (Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, Is, p. 318) declare that the idea of
expiationis one that does notjiarmomzejvith Schwenckfeld's mystical principles.
He retained the current bibHcal formulas, but infused into" them a characteristic
physico-spiritual content.

65
It is not necessary for our purpose to dwell upon the subsidiary
features of Schwenckfeld's conception of the nature of justifica
tion. He has often been accused of reverting to Catholicism in his
discussion of the need and importance of good works. But the
charge .is ill founded. He was neither a legalist nor a perfectionist.
Such was his conviction of the estrangement between the creature
and the Creator that even the regenerated soul can do nothing to
merit the divine favor, nor can it ever in this life reach a point
where it is absolutely free from the defilement and bondage of sin.
In these matters, indeed, Schwenckfeld may be said to have equaled
any of his contemporaries in sobriety of judgment and keenness of
insight into the biblical data concerning the relations of faith and
works.* He therefore did not purpose to deny the orthodox doc
trines of the imputed righteousness and the vicariousness of Christ's
death, nor had he any desire, with his emphasis on the need of holy
living, to countenance the Romish idea of the meritorious char
acter of good works. The fact is that he simply used the term
justification, as .Luther himself had- done,! in the double sense of
declaring and making righteous ^u^that^Jn accordance with his
spiritualistic tendency, he laid primary stress upon the latter factor.
In short, he widened the application of the word to the whole pro
cess of salvation, including that which to him was the basal con
sideration, the redemption from creaturehood itself. Sanctifica
tion is only another name for the same gradual transformation.!
* Cf. the verdict of Schenkel, Das Wesen des Prot, II, 520. It is true that
Schwenckfeld speaks much of the rewards of Christian service, but, on the other
hand, no reformer recognized more clearly than he did the all-sufficiency and the
absolutely exclusive merit of the Redeemer's work. Even our own good deeds
, are in reality nothing but the manifestations of the life of God within the soul.
Christ is himself the merit of our good works. See The Threefold Life of Man,
Anspach's Translation, Ch. XXX, p. Ill, "How the Word, the Reward and
Merit of Good Works are to be properly adjudged" and understood." The For
mula Concordia (Epitome, Art. XII; in Schaff, Creeds, etc., Ill, p. 178) clearly
reveals the influence of Schwenckfeld's antagonists, Andrea and Flacius, when it
represents him as saying: "Quod homo pius, vere per Spiritum Dei regeneratus,,
legem Dei in hac vita perfecte servare et implere valeat." Kurtz, I.e., p. 150,.
repeats the unjust charge. It is true that Schwenckfeld made much of the text,
' ' Whoso abideth in him sinneth not ' ' (1 John iii. 5) , and delighted in the paradox,,
"Christians have sin, yet sin not" (e.g., A 209a) ; but the context always explains
such declarations in harmony with the constantly recurring principle: "We never
live without sin before God" (A 379a). Even Planck, accordingly, charges the
Lutheran divines with chicanery and falsehood in this matter (Geschichte der
Entstehung, etc., Vol. V, 1, p. 221).
t Cf. Loofs, Dogmengeschichte?, p. 351 sqq., and Otto, Anschauung vom heiligen
Geiste bei Luther, p. 27f.
X Cf . D 725c, in margin : ' ' Die Justificatio ist nicht allein Vergebung der Stinden,
sondern auch die Heiligung und Erneuerung des innerlichen Menschen."
5

66
Indeed, even the more restricted term "pardon" is likewise
stretched far beyond its usual limits ,* and made to designate the
actual removal of the sins and even the totality of redemptive
blessings. It is plain, then, that the characteristic features of Schwenckfeld's
conception of the mode of salvation, and therefore also of the nature
of the benefits to be derived from a right use of the sacramental
Supper, must be sought, not so much in his polemic statements
against his opponents — for he largely used their own and the
biblical formulas — as in the elaboration of his positive views con
cerning the very essence of Christianity. We do not come to the
heart of the matter, therefore, until, regardless of his frequent
attempts to harmonize his speculations with the more usual inter
pretations of Scripture then in vogue, we fully apprehend the
essentially mystical or magical mode in which he conceived the
process of salvation. Along the periphery of his theologizing, to
be sure, he ever took pains to avoid the extremes of the more
radical subjectivism of that day, and even at the expense of self-
consistency he strove, as we have seen, to take more thoroughly
conservative views of the Word, of the Church, and of the Sacra
ments than his philosophic presuppositions strictly warranted.
But at the centre and core of his system of thought, and in the very
heart of his practical piety, he reveals the characteristics of a
genuine Protestant mysticism. It is necessary, in conclusion,
therefore, to ascertain the precise nature of the causes that made
him take, so far as the question of the sacred Supper is concerned,
the mediating and unstable, because not strictly logical, position
he assumed. We have still to learn the deepest meaning of the
correlative terms "justification" and "faith."
It cannot be too sharply emphasized, then, that however dili
gently Schwenckfeld strove to get scriptural warrant for his views
and to accommodate himself to the new formulas of the Protestant
theology, he taught an essentially physico-spiritual salvation, in
which the communication of the divine life as a substantive prin
ciple must be magically effected.
*D921d, 922: "Was ist aber Vergebungder Stinden fur ein Ding? Antwort:
es ist nich allein ein Nichtzurechnung der Stinden .... nicht allein eine gnadige,
barmherzige Nachlassung der Strafe Gottes, so wir durch die Stinde und Unge-
horsam vor Gott wohl verschuldet haben; sondern es ist auch ein Toten, Abtilgen,
und Hinnehmen der Stinden vom Herzen und Gewissen .... Da ist die Sunde
mit ihrer Klage tod, ja vor Gott hinweg und abgetilgt, das Herz ist gereinigt, und
zur Einwohnung der heihgen Dreifaltigkeit zubereitet, dass auch der Mensch, der
in Christo bleibet, alsdann weder den ewigen Tod, der Stinden Sold ist, noch das
hollische Feuer, welches ihre Strafe ist, nicht mehr darf furchten."

67
In spite of all that has been said, therefore, to show that he in
explicit terms admitted the traditional views concerning the vicari
ous atonement as a basis for the imputation of Christ's righteous
ness, we must be prepared to find a disturbing stress laid upon the
inward subjective appropriation of the divine-human essence of
the Redeemer himself. The Word must become "spirit-flesh" in
every believer. "It is therefore not enough that we believe that
the Word has become flesh, but we must also believe that it still
for Christ's sake becomes flesh. I repeat, we must know not only
that Jesus Christ then came into the flesh, but that even to-day he
by reason of his holy and glorified flesh comes into all other flesh
which receives him in faith, and that he regenerates this, leads it by
the Spirit, and makes it a child of God."* Christ, then, is to be
born and fashioned anew in every soul that is to be redeemed.
But this language is for Schwenckfeld no mere metaphor. Such
is his conception of salvation, that the whole process appears as a
realistic transformation of the natural man, body and soul, into
an ever-increasing likeness to the deified humanity of Christ, the
goal being such a participation in the divine essence that the sinner
himself is divinitized.!
The details of the process are worked out with more or less in
genuity in the adaptation of the theory to the biblical data. The
* A 517b. Cf. the marginal caption, "Wie das Wort noch heute in den Glau
bigen geistliches Fleisch werde. ' '
t Such at least is the obvious import of the strong language sometimes em
ployed. Cf. D 142: "So konnten sie [his Lutheran opponents] aus der Gnaden
Gottes, auch mit der Schrift Zeugnis, den allerteuersten Wechsel bald finden, dass
Gott drum sei Mensch worden, auf das der Mensch wiederum Gott wurde in Christo
unserm Herrn." Cf. the phrase in D 856c, "je langer je mehr vergottet." It
must immediately be added, however, that Schwenckfeld did not purpose to be
a pantheist. His conception of God is too personal, too ethical, to permit such
an interpretation. He reveals even in the immediate contexts of such passages
as we have just referred to his fundamentally practical and moral aim: "ver
gottet," after all, means only "geistlich und heil gemacht zur volligen Gesund-
heit." We have here another illustration of the danger of magnifying the
speculative at the expense of the religious and ethical element in Schwenckfeld.
Philosophically, indeed, he may be said to overcome his dualism by pantheistic-
ally transcending it. But in the adjustment of his basal principles to his biblical
exegesis he resolutely avoids the unethical conclusions to which his speculations
would lead. He made much of St. Peter's phrase concerning our becoming ' 'par
takers of the divine nature' ' (2 Peter i. 4), but he had just as little intention as the
apostle had of countenancing pantheism. The most that can be said against him ,
from this point of view, is that he at times used forms of speech which, if not con
strued in the light of his considerations for the practical rehgious life, would in
evitably lead to pantheism. Cf. A 286d, where he explicitly attacks Sebastian
Franck's genuinely pantheistic utterances concerning the indwelling of the Word
of God, the divine seed, in all men.

68
first stage of the development is that whereby "Christ is con
ceived and bom in us by faith."* This is the beginning of the
Christian experience, the dawn in the heart -of the spiritual light
necessary to apprehend the Redeemer in his true worth. This he
also designates the "regeneration" of the sinner, which, it will be
remembered, he made to consist of a supernatural or creative act,
whereby the principle of sonship is implanted in the creature in
order, by a process of inner transformation, to bring him completely
into the estate of grace. The second stage is that of conformity to
Christ, ' ' which the Holy Spirit by faith effects in the members of his
body, and it is the whole life of Christ in the flesh, with his doctrine,
miracles, and benefits, .... so that Christ becomes strong in us,
and we more and more faithfully follow him in his walk and life by
means of the proffered grace." The third stage pertains to the
' ' crucifixion_of Christ in us, ' ' which is to be understood both of the
trials and hardships imposed upon the Christians by the world and
of the never-ceasing warfare between the flesh and the Spirit. The
fourth stage, ' ' that Christj_s buried in us, " constitutes the victory
of the Spirit over the world and the flesh and the devil.! The fifth
stage is the resurrection of Christ-withinus, when he fully triumphs
in our lives and renders it impossible for us to be permanently
estranged from the Lord.! The sixth stage, that of the ' ' ascension
of Christ .within us, ' ' denotes the continual upward drawing oflthe
heart to the affairs of its heavenly citizenship. The final or seventh
stage is "that Christ in us sits at the right hand of his heavenly
Father." Here "man often learns more in one hour, when he is
drawn rapturously to this point, than otherwise in much time ; here
we only begin to know the glory, honor, might and power of the
man, yea of the flesh of Jesus Christ according to the Spirit, through
which merit and glory all these gifts are granted to our poor flesh. ' '
It may be supposed that this is but pictorial language, to set
forth with realistic force the sinner's need of apprehending the
whole objective work of Christ, from its first inception in the incar
nation itself to its unending activity in the mediatorial reign in the
kingdom of heaven. And doubtless in many passages that speak
of the indwelling and informing Christ the writer meant no more
* In what immediately follows we draw from the chief passage on the subject,
B 522-532, Vom Geheimnis der ganzen Ausfiihrung Christi, wie unser Fleisch aus
Gnaden mit ihm in eine Gemeinschaft komme.
X The more accurate designation, "our being buried in Christ, ' ' is also used.
X In this connection the fact is emphasized that, so far as the time element is
concerned, the various stages may follow one another in quick succession or after
long intervals.

than Christians have ever understood by those terms, which identify
the life-process itself in the redeemed soul with Christ, its author,
its object, and its end. But, as a rule, there is something deeper,
something more_substantial, something genuinely mystical em
bodied in these fanciful formulas. More and more the Christian is
dominated by the life which, emanating in a concrete manner from
the deified flesh of the Redeemer, implants its essential principle
in the sinner. The substance of God himself is communicated from
the glorified humanity of Christ .*
The practical question for us in this connection, therefore, is
that concerning the mode in which these physico-spiritual blessings
are conferred upon the Christian in the Supper. The answer is the
thoroughly conventional one, that the bestowal and reception of
grace, whether in the sacraments or apart from them, is all a matter
of faith. Manifestly, then, Schwenckfeld ought to give a scientific
vindication of faith as the instrument whereby the soul receives her
spiritual gifts. But this is precisely where he utterly fails to bring
his philosophic presuppositions into harmony with the practical
exigencies of his religious teaching. Faith is to serve, as we have
seen, as the nexus between the outer ceremonial rite and the inward
or truly sacramental transaction. But what dialectic connection
is effected by the use of this pre-eminently scriptural term? How
does faith, coming to the Lord's table, receive from the consecrated
elements a spiritual gift? Or, once more to reduce the matter to
the largest common denominator, how does faith ever appropriate
Christ? The problem, by reason of its practical importance, often pressed
itself upon the reformer's attention. But his laborious efforts
toward its solution amount in effect only to an ingenious petitio
principii. The central significance of this Christian virtue of
faith is, indeed, clearly apprehended; but there is no satisfactory
explanation of the function which, "according to the logic of his
system, faith must needs perform. Never having fully grasped
that profoundly religious and ethical conception of the term which

* Cf. A 627d, where the "gottlich, geistlich Wesen" acquired by Christ after
his resurrection is represented as being imparted to the believer at the beginning of
his life of faith. A 831b even speaks of Christians becoming gods by virtue of the
fullness of the divine hfe implanted in them. In D 379a, Schwenckfeld speaks of
the virtues of the Christian character as being, "in a measure and in part, by
grace, that which God is naturally, and in the totality, and in perfect fullness. "
The biblical "indwelling of the Spirit" is made to signify a deification of the
human soul or its participation in the divine essence (ibid).

his spiritual father Luther had acquired in the course of an extra
ordinary experience of the grace of God, Schwenckfeld, in his zeal to
refute what was after all only a caricature of the evangehcal view of
faith, succumbed to the temptation of going to the opposite ex
treme of fairly annihilating the ethical and religious factors in the
process of salvation. Nothing indeed was farther from his de
liberate intention : his conceptions of God and man, of holiness
and sin, reveal a sufficiently clear apprehension of the moral qual
ity pertaining to freedom of choice. But his theory of the
nature and function of the concrete, physico-spiritual substance of
the deified flesh of Christ had such a determining influence upon his
speculations that, in spite of his efforts to cast his thought into
biblical moulds, and in spite of his meritorious services in criticising
the ethical shortcomings of misunderstood and misapplied evangel
icalism, he himself could not, except by occasionally departing from
his own premises in the interests of his ardent piety, vindicate for
personal faith a genuinely rehgious and ethical significance. His
"spiritual" knowledge of Christ is after all no real knowledge: it is
at best a consciousness, a feeling; it cannot, or at least it does not,
establish its claims by any dialectic addressed to reason. In his
own case, indeed, his "faith" worked beautifully by love; it filled
the heart of the persecuted man with the holy confidence and
gladness that inspired the noble motto, ' ' Xii triste, Christo recepto. ' '
Above all ascetic weakness, he took a serious yet thoroughly sane
view of the things of time and sense; free Hke wise from the ecstatic
elations of the professed mystic, he yet hoped intently for the
blessed consummation of the heavenly kingdom. But his faith,
real, ardent, mighty as it must have been in his own experience,
could not give any rational account of the high prerogatives it
claimed for itself. It was somehow to serve as the means whereby
the soul must come into the possession of her spiritual treasures;
but in the confessedly difficult subject of the psychology of faith he
found it impossible, in spite of his numerous biblical citations, to
remove or conceal his dialectic embarrassment. A few passages
from his works will show the magnitude of his difficulty.
He never wearies of imputing to his opponents a purely ' ' historic"
or rationalistic, as distinguished from a "true" or "spiritual,"
faith. "The Lutherans," we are told, have a historical Christ
whom they know according to the letter, according to the events of
his life, his teachings, miracles, and deeds, not as he to-day lives
and works; just as they have a historical rationalistic faith (Ver-
nunftglauben) and a historical justification, which they base upon

71
the promises, no matter to whom they belong* He insists that his
critics make too marked a separation between their creed and
their conduct.! They have only the faith that may come from
a knowledge of the letter of Scripture, not the faith that comes only
from the hearing of the inner Word.! They fail to realize the
difference between a dead faith and a vitalizing knowledge of the
Redeemer. They look too much to mere ceremonial rites, and not
enough to Christ the ' ' ruling King of grace. ' ' §
But if it is only just to make some concessions to Schwenckfeld so
far as his general criticism of his opponents is concerned, his own
positive or constructive views of faith are altogether unsatisfactory.
For we must not permit ourselves to be deceived by the apparent
scripturalness of his statements that faith is a gift, and that as such
it is mediated to the sinful soul directly by the divine-human
Redeemer. Schwenckfeld gives these assertions a far different
significance from that ordinarily connected with them. To him
faith is a real, substantive principle. It is, in a word, a portion of
the very being of God. ' ' Now therefore true faith is a gift of God,
a present of the Holy Spirit. It is fundamentally (im Grunde) one
essence with him who gives and presents it; a co-partner (Mit-
genosse) with him who does and works all things; a beam of the
eternal sun. It is a little spark of that burning fire which is God
himself. ' '|| It is a part of that which in its fullness exists in God
only.U " It is a scion or plant of the divine righteousness, essen
tially implanted and established in the heart of man. "** " It is, ' '

*A812. t Ibid.
X See, e.g., D 637 sqq., C 462, A 421-4.
§ B 638 sq.
|| A 814cd. Cf. the equally striking statement in A 420: "Daher kommt der
wahre gerechtmachende christliche Glaube aus Gottes Natur, Selbstand und
Wesen, wie er denn vor Anfang der Welt samt andern geistlichen Gaben in Gott
verborgen." If Cf. D 379. The analogy of the sun shedding its beams without diminishing
itself is here repeated. The margin, to be sure, would guard against our speaking
of a particula solis in case of the radiating beams. But the illustration itself, and
the other statements on the subject, make it plain that faith must, as the logic of
his system requires, be conceived as a substantive, a physico-spiritual principle.
How closely Luther approximated such statements may be seen in Hering,
Luthers Mystik, pp. 97 sqq., 170 sq. ; and cf . Dorner, Lehre von der Person Christi,
p. 631, n. 1. Schenkel, I.e., II, p. 440, compares Schwenckfeld in this respect with
Servetus and Osiander.
** D 380d.

to revert to the favorite mode of representation, ' ' a stream and
radiance of the heavenly light and fire which is God himself. ' '*
These passages will abundantly have shown how impersonal is
Schwenckfeld's conception of faith. It seems at times to be
nothing but an ethereal substance emanating from the spirit-flesh of
the glorified Christ. It is produced in an altogether one-sided and
magical manner by a divine causality, there being logically no place
left for the free act of a moral agent. Man indeed, strictly speaking,
cannot believe. He is to wait in a state of passivity until the im
planting of the divine life has been effected; faith in its first stage
is identified with regeneration. The strong emphasis laid upon the
uselessness of ' ' means of grace ' ' — it will be remembered, however,
that here too the practice did not quite keep pace with the theory —
only made the whole process of salvation appear altogether supra-
rational.! To be sure, the theory admirably served the one pur
pose the author had in mind : the presence of such a faith fills the
heart with unmistakable signs of its presence; the beam reveals
itself by its own light and warms by its own ardor. Himself not
given to ecstatic excesses, he at least left the door wide open for the
vagaries of a genuinely mystical subjectivism. If he himself was
saved from a more radical spiritualism by his vigorous and well-
controlled religious life which expressed itself in the normal chan
nels pf service, his theory of the mode of salvation cannot fairly be
said to do justice to the ethical needs of men. With all his objec
tions, therefore, to the Lutheran and Reformed doctrine of pre-
* D 634d. Cf. also A 517, C 280d, D 145a. It was such mystical language that
led Mat. Flacius to say of Schwenckfeld (see the Verlegung der kurzen Antwort
des Schwenckfeldt, 1554, p. C iii) : ' 'Was ist er aber fiir ein toller Heihger, dem das
Wort Gottes das Wesen Gottes selbst ist, das Evangelium ist ihm das Wesen
Gottes, der Glaube ist ihm das Wesen Gottes, unsere Erneuerung ist ihm das
Wesen Gottes, unsere Gerechtigkeit vor Gott ist ihm das Wesen Gottes. Alle
Gaben des heihgen Geistes sind ihm das Wesen Gottes." We are prepared to
realize how much in this representation is true and how much is a caricature of
the truth. It would be easy to treat many another doctrine of Schwenckfeld in
this fashion. At the same time it must be admitted that there is no other point
so openly vulnerable in his system as his conception of the office of faith. Here
the practical rehgious- interests that ordinarily held him back from the logical
extremity of his principles did not, and could not, preserve for his mysticism a
truly ethical significance.
t Cf. the passage C 372: "Wer von aussen ein und durch das Aussere in das
Innere will kommen, der versteht nicht den Gnadenlauf  Der Mensch
muss alles vergessen und fallen lassen und zu dem Einsprechen der Gnaden und
aller Dinge ledig gelassen und alien Creaturen genommen sein, ganzlich Gott
ergeben  Deswegen ist der Gnaden und des heihgen Geistes einiger
Schlitt und Mittel, darauf er in die stille Seele rutscht, sein allmachtiges ewiges
Wort, so ohne Mittel von dem Mund Gottes ausgeht. ' '

73
destination,* he can do no more for the sinner than to point him to
a faith which is essentially an implanting of the divine substance,
an altogether impersonal and unintelligible act so far as the bene
ficiary is concerned. Here, then, the two extremes meet — that
which he regarded as the one-sided externalism of the Lutheran
movement and that to which, with the protest of his mystical piety
against all religious deadness and all mechanical ecclesiasticism, he
himself went when he made faith a concrete ingrafting into the
heart of the substantive principle of divinity. In the one case, as in
the other, the ethical needs of the believer were jeopardized; but
whereas in Lutheranism it was the practice that failed to maintain
itself on the high level of the evangelical theory, in Schwenckfeld
the defective theory of faith was wisely overruled in practice by a
consideration for the religious welfare of the believer. And just as
Luther, in his doctrine concerning the mode in which sacramental
blessings are conferred, made the physical organ of the mouth the
channel for the transmission of a spiritual benefit, so Schwenckfeld
converted faith, a strictly spiritual act, into a vehicle for the trans
mission of a hyperphysical substance which none the less must some
how influence the body as well as the soul.
A practical illustration of the difficulty in which Schwenckfeld's
theory of faith involved his whole system may be found in his
views on the subject of the salvation of the Old Testament saints.
From all that has been said it would appear that no person living
before, the time_of_tiie incarnation, i.e., before this mystical or
hyperphysical flesh of Christ came into existence, could feed his
soul upon the true bread of life, which, as we have seen, is nothing
other than the flesh and blood of the Son of man. And this is pre
cisely how some of the interpreters have represented the matter.
Planck, for example, declares that Schwenckfeld explicitly taught
that under the old economy no one was or could be saved.!
There can be no doubt that Schwenckfeld refused to place the
ceremonial rites of the Old upon the same plane with the sacraments
of the New Testament. The latter not only signify or symbolize the
spiritual blessings, but they actually convey them.! The two dis
pensations are genetically different in that the Old consists in " ex-
* See, e.g., D 398ff., 412ff., 420ff.
t Geschichte d. Entstehung, etc., V, B. IV, pp. 119, 189, 192 sq. Dr. Hodge,
System. Theol, II, 587, was probably following Planck in declaring: "In a Send-
brief written in 1532, in which he treats of the difference between the Old and New
Testament economies, he says that under the former there was no saving faith,
and no justification, and that all the patriarchs had therefore perished forever ' '
X A 510. __ _._ ..... —

74
ternal divine service, promises, carnal justifications and external
holiness, and is a shadow of the heavenly blessings"; whereas the
New consists in the "spiritual, true justification through the blood
of Jesus Christ."* Baptism is therefore not a Jewish cleansing.!
He finds fault with Calvin, Bullinger and others for not making a
sufficiently broad distinction between the two covenants.!
The fact is, however, that Schwenckfeld unequivocally taught
the salvation of all Old Testament worthies, and that too according
to the same principles that obtain in the new dispensation, that is
by "faith" in the divine-human Mediator. To be sure, one loose-
jointed sentence in the chief letter on the subject seems to militate
against this assertion: "That in short no person before Christ
entered heaven, or was able to receive salvation; that all holy
fathers, patriarchs and prophets hoped in and waited for Christ, and
by faith in the promises were preserved in Abraham's bosom. ' ' But
not only does the margin rightly give the gist of the passage, ' ' that
no person has been able to enter the divine glory without the suf
fering of Christ, ' ' but the letter repeatedly states, what is likewise
the uniform representation elsewhere, that the patriarchs became
participants in the merits of Christ's saving work. §
But of course the real question, again, is not whether Schwenck
feld at times taught the salvation of the Old Testament saints, but
whether he could with logical consistency take this view of the
problem. Must we not in this case also find his explicit statements
conflicting with the basal principles of his philosophy and theology?
* B 593b.
t B, Part I, p. 112ff. Cf. the entire third letter: "Darin bewiesen wird dass die
Sacramente Christi nicht aus dem Gesetz Mosi genommen noch den Ceremonien
oder Sacramenten des alten Testaments mogen verglichen werden. ' '
X C 521d. Cf. Kahnis, Die Lehre vom Abendmahl, p. 462.
§ A p. 57 speaks of faith's bringing Christ into the heart and effecting ' ' one sort
of forgiveness of sins, grace and salvation in all saints," "whether at the begin
ning, middle or end of the world. " Cf . also p. 58b : ' ' Drum so ist deshalben kein
Unterschied zwischen den glaubigen Vatern im alten Testament und zwischen
uns die wir glauben." The difference, therefore, to which attention is called in
the text, does not concern the fate of true believers under the two covenants, but
rather the institutions, the sacraments and, in a word, the genius of the two
covenants themselves. In the former, no less than in the latter, there was true
"feeding upon Christ." "Also haben nun die Jtinger Christi" — he means the
disciples at the time of the institution of the Supper, i.e., before the glorification
of the Redeemer's body — "ja, auch alle Vater den Leib und Blut Christi gegessen
durch den Glauben, sowohl als ihn noch heute alle Glaubigen in des Herrn Nacht-
mal essen und damit gespeiset und zum ewigen Leben genahrt und gesattigt
werden. ' ' Cf . the treatise, Auslegung des Evang. Luce XIV, Vom Abendmahl des
Herrn, pp. Hiii sqq.: "Dass der Herr Christus auch mit alien Glaubigen von
Anbeginn der Welt sein Abendmahl hat gehalten."

75
The solution is attempted from two opposite sides: either faith is
rationalized so that it is no longer a hyperphysical substance iden
tical with the divine essence, or else the conception of salvation is
modified so that the Old Testament believers were the subjects of
a genetically different redemption during their sojourn on earth.
Sometimes, indeed, the difficulty is simply evaded, when, e.g., the
term "faith" is given the further capacity of having no necessary
temporal or earthly relationship whatsoever. ' ' The nourishing, ' '
that is of the faithful before Christ's birth, ' ' is before God beyond
all time (aus aller Zeit) and consists in coelestibus, in the heavenly
divine essence, and takes place in this world only through a true
living faith. ' '* Schwenckfeld made much in this connection of such
formulas as ' ' the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of
the world" (Rev. xiii. 8). But there is here no real grappling with
the problem as to how spiritual blessings were mediated in the Old
economy. It is, moreover, a characteristic of genuine mysticism
thus to unite God and the soul without any dialectic means. Re
gardless of the assertion, therefore, that the faith is the same in
both dispensations, save that in the former it was secret and con
cealed, whereas in the latter it is revealed and open,! it was natural
for Schwenckfeld to have recourse to the familiar view of his op
ponents, that faith in the case of the patriarchs was ' ' the assurance
of things hoped for ' ' — that is to say a strictly personal act, a volun
tary trust in divinely promised blessings.! It could, therefore,
"make all future things present," just as was the case in the com
mon evangelical conception of the term. On the other hand, where
he adhered strictly to his usual definition of faith, he was bound to
secure the salvation of the Old Testament saints by the only other
available expedient — the saving process must be idealized.
The patriarchs must be represented as waiting in the "vestibule
of Hades," "as in a prison," § for the infusion of that peculiar
physico-spiritual principle from the flesh of the risen and deified
Jesus which, as we have seen, was Schwenckfeld's normal concep
tion of redemption. Either therefore faith becomes for the time
a strictly personal act, and the whole mystical theory breaks down
at the point of its contact with the individual moral agent, or else,
the logic of the system being preserved, the fathers under the old
* A 655. t A 58b.
X Cf. Heb. xi. 1. It was precisely this word, Morao-ic, in the definition
of faith, however, that led Schwenckfeld to conceive of this divine gift as a sub
stantive and non-personal principle.
§ A 61a.

76
covenant could not really partake of this hyperphysical and
unethical salvation.
With this exposition of Schwenckfeld's view of faith we may
conclude, having thus traced the entire circle of his specu
lations so far as they bear upon his participation in the
eucharistic controversy of his age* We have sought to
interpret the man in the light of the historical situation in
which he found so much to oppose, and then in the light of
his own positive contribution to the solution of the problem that
perplexed him and his contemporaries. It will have appeared, no
doubt, that, like most of the extremists of that day, he had in the
facts themselves an ample justification for the exercise of his pro
testing spirit; but that he likewise failed to grasp the essence of the
evangelical reformation in the' full depth of its meaning, and there
fore failed also to meet the necessities of the case with a superior
message. His negations were more timely and valuable than his
affirmations. His diagnosis did him more credit than the treatment
he prescribed. An ardent champion of the claims of subjective
piety and the exemplification of the religious graces in daily conduct,
his practice not seldom revealed, by its felicitous inconsistency with
his theorizing, the truly Protestant secret of the adjustment be
tween faith and works, between the inner activities of the redeemed
soul and its outward manifestations in the sphere of all communal
life. A strong and beautiful character, he often succeeded in
transcending the limitations of his one basal error, the deification of
the flesh of Christ, and overcame the mystical indefiniteness of his
speculations; and where he could not do this to the satisfaction of
* Such minor facts as his pecuhar emphasis upon the necessity of strict eccle
siastical discipline and sincere piety on the part of the pastors administering the
Supper may be passed over in silence. They simply afford another illustration
of what, we hope, has become thoroughly clear from the discussion, that this
radical reformer was governed on all practical questions by such deeply rehgious
interests that time and again he laid stress upon considerations which must be
regarded as logically incompatible with his basal principles. For if God needs no
means of grace and never confers gifts through creaturely instrumentalities, why
should such rigorous Donatistic standards be applied to preacher or communicants ?
If faith operates magically, apart from all external and sensible realities, if in
essence it is an emanation from God, what need is there of regarding either the
person or the office of the celebrant? Here, too, the devout man was much better
than his. ill-phrased creed. Equally unnecessary is the inquiry concerning the
effects of the Supper upon unbelievers. Not having the ' 'spiritual discernment of
faith, ' ' they cannot receive the inner sacramental gift ; they cannot take part in the
feast without being condemned, even though the act of communing may symbol
ize to their own or other minds the significance of the redemptive fact of the
Saviour's death. Cf. B 78a and A 800a.

77
his opponents, he yet succeeded by the sheer force of his piety in
winning to himself a band of devoted followers who might indeed
in years to come forget some of his theological vagaries, but who
would ever sacredly cherish the heritage of his prayers and labors in
behalf of a pure evangelical faith, a truly spiritual Christianity.
But the ultimate test must take account chiefly of the positive
rather than of the merely negative contribution which Schwenck
feld tried to make toward the solution of the great problem, the
central question of human existence, the clear positing of which was
the genesis of the Reformation — that of the soul's relation to God.
We have seen how largely Schwenckfeld seems to have answered
the question in the very terms of the Protestant theology, in the very
language of the Bible. It is hoped, however, that the exhibition of
the apparent affinities and similarities between Schwenckfeld and his
evangelical opponents will have served by contrast to sharpen and
deepen the impression which we believe his works must make upon
every candid reader — that of the radical and irreconcilable difference
between his and the traditional conception of the essence of Chris
tianity. With the fondness of a genuine mystic to express his
thoughts and feelings in the hallowed texts of Scripture, he failed
to see how illogical and impossible it was to make these words bear
the strain of a system of speculation which might indeed preserve
the supernatural and Christocentric character of the divine revela
tion, but which could not do justice to the fundamentally ethical and
personal needs of the religious subject. In his polemic against the
external ecclesiasticism of his age, he was justified in coming for
ward as a spokesman for the rights of that inward religious freedom
which could discard all priestly mediation and emphasize the great
truth, that the soul can and may enjoy direct communion with the
Infinite- Spirit. But after all allowances are made on the score of
the harsh angularities of his diverse opponents, his manifold in
consistencies in attempting to give his practical reform endeavors a
speculative basis must likewise be freely acknowledged. That he
was a mystic was his strength and glory : it was precisely his mysti-
eism that gave him kinship with the master-minds of his age, above
all with Luther and Calvin, and enabled him, albeit in a one-sided
and critisable manner, to express many an evangelical principle
with an unsurpassed clearness and force. But that in his polemic
zeal he permitted himself to sacrifice the biblical basis of a genuinely
Christian mysticism, this was the speculative error that exposed
his whole system to attack and detracted from its many practical

78
excellencies.* For this cardinal theory of the deification of the flesh
or humanity of Christ, and the necessity of identifying redemption
with a substantive ingrafting into the soul of the very essence
of the divine-human nature of Christ, continually interfered
with his attempt to vindicate a place for the concrete reali
ties of the historical Church. The Bible was, to be sure,
the book of books; but so sharp was the separation between
the inner and outer Word, and so one-sided was the empha
sis upon the absolute necessity and the all-sufficiency of the
former to the verge of a possible exclusion of the latter, that in
spite of his reverence for the Scriptures and his willingness in prac
tice to make them the norm of his faith and conduct, he really had
no logical warrant for his religious devotion to the sacred text : there
was no adequate nexus between the letter and the spirit, between
the "historical" and the "spiritual" understanding of the Word.
Much less can his doctrine of the sacraments commend itself to the
reason. The inner transaction has no necessary, not even a dialec
tic, connection with the outward rite. Yet again we are counseled to
study the true purpose of the eucharist, and to console ourselves
with the assurance that "in the use of the sacrament by faith"
grace is communicated. But when this middle term "faith' ' is in
vestigated, we are once more forced to conclude that however strongly
Schwenckfeld wished to remain loyal to the confessedly divine insti
tutions of the Church, he had no logical ground for regarding the
sacraments as anything more than symbolic and didactic cere
monies. The right use of them, like the right interpretation of the
Scriptures, demands faith; but faith itself is a gift of God that
?The apphcation of the term "mystical" to those mysterious elements in
Christianity wliich pertain to the direct contact and union between the finite and
the Infinite Spirit is too common and convenient to be ruthlessly set aside.
Schwenckfeld, it is true, reared his mysticism upon a faulty doctrinal basis, and
therefore he also exceeded the bounds of propriety even in his negative attitude
toward the importance of the historical Church and her means of grace. But
nothing is gained by simply branding him as a mystic. The best elements of bis
"mysticism" simply reflect the deepest verities of the Christian religion as set
forth by John and Paul, by Athanasius and Augustine, by Luther and Calvin.
It would be easy to find in all of these writers precisely the same "mystical
indefiniteness ' ' that appears in the unfathomable words of the Saviour to his dis
ciples : ' ' Abide in me, and I in you, ' ' words which have never either by inspired
or uninspired dialectics been resolved into any simpler or more fully comprehen
sible terms. On the general subject of the relation of mysticism to Christianity,
see TJllmann, Das Wesen des Christentums, 4th ed., 1854, and his article, "Das
Wesen des Christentums und die Mystik, ' ' in the Theolog. Studien und Kritiken,
1852, H. 3, pp. 535-614; compare especially the passages cited on page 600 from
Calvin's Institutes to show the truly mystical vein in this great theologian.

79
neither requires nor admits any external mediation — a possession,
therefore, which can be neither increased nor diminished by using
or not using the appointed ordinance of worship. The Lord
is indeed truly present at his table; not in, with, or under the
elements, nor under their accidents, but to the faith of the worthy
communicant. The question, however, recurs: How can the
presence be a real one, in the spiritual sense of the term, when faith
itself is reduced to a finely corporeal, a hyperphysical yet mechanic
ally acting effluence from God through the deified flesh of the
Redeemer? The benefits to be received in the sacrament may, it
will be remembered, be presented almost in the language of the
Reformed theologians. Yet how different in Schwenckfeld is the
significance of such terms as redemption, regeneration, justifica
tion, eating and drinking the flesh and blood of the Son of man!
With all his insistence upon the true humanity of Christ, he could
not logically avoid the evil consequences of his theory that redemp
tion necessitated a deliverance from the very estate of creaturehood;
his system has a profoundly anti-natural as well as anti-personal
tendency, and both his conception of human nature had to be
modified in order to permit a real incarnation of the Son of God,
and his notion of personality had to be conformed to the require
ments of the strictly magical and unethical operation by which
God makes the soul a "partaker of the divine nature." His
fundamental irrationality, that the human nature of Christ became
essentially divine and yet remained truly human, presented alike to
reason and to faith an impossible basis upon which to rest. A
spiritualist dominated by the formulas of the new-found evangelical
ism, he had no proper place in his system of speculations for the per
son and work of the Holy Spirit. Herein lies the difference between
him and, so far as the eucharistic controversy is concerned, his
nearest spiritual kinsmen, the leaders of the Reformed Church.
Both he and they sought to find in faith the psychological nexus
between the divine blessing and the sinful soul; but whereas they
rose to a clear apprehension of the specific function of the Spirit in
the application of grace, whether through the sacraments or apart
from all such means, Schwenckfeld was compelled by the logic of his
primary error to transform those genuinely mystical passages of
Scripture that teach the gracious but mysterious operations of the
Spirit directly upon the heart into a highly speculative but
false mysticism. He labored to have the fagades of his structure
present the familiar characteristics of evangelical orthodoxy, and
he succeeded in making the edifice serve as a delightful sanctuary

80
for many a deeply pious nature; but he could not with all his
wealth of architectural ornamentation conceal the weakness of
that imposing pretension that was everywhere made to serve as the
foundation for the building, the unscriptural and irrational dictum
that the humanity of Jesus Christ is divinitized yet remains essen
tially the same.
But if in spite of this basal speculative error Schwenckfeld could
nevertheless achieve so large a measure of real success, we must be
prepared to estimate at their true worth those elements of his sys
tem of thought and those factors in his personal influence that im
pressed so many of his contemporaries with the excellence of his
life and work. His noble birth, the graces of his person and the
charm of his maimer, his eloquent pleas for religious toleration and
concord, the warmth and beauty of his piety doubtless served to
disarm criticism and inspire confidence. MoreoA'er, the almost
feminine receptivity of his nature had led him to try to approximate,
as best he could, the distinctive peculiarities of the new evangelical
message : in many a noble paragraph he shows how deeply he had
grasped the inmost essence of Protestantism. Indeed, the skill
and, where skill availed not, the unthinking boldness with which
he sought to fuse heterogeneous and really incompatible elements
into a unitary system of theological speculation easily conveyed to
congenial spirits, to minds of a contemplative rather than a logical
cast, the impression that his conception of Christianity offered not
only the practical advantages of the common understanding of the
rediscovered Gospel but also the superior claims of a deeper, because
more mystical and less one-sided, interpretation of the facts of our
religious experience. With all his exegetical shortcomings, more
over, he not seldom enjoyed a spiritual vision that revealed with
the clearness and certainty of intuitive knowledge the manifold
deficiencies of his opponents. Like all spiritualists he was a stub
born protestant against the existing order of things, and therein,
no doubt, is to be found his noblest service to the cause of truth.
On the fundamental questions concerning the relation of the Spirit
to the Word, the bearing of religious belief upon life, and the nature
of the Church and her sacraments, — the three points that engaged
the chief attention of all the leading dissenters,* — he uttered judg
ments and forged arguments which historical Christianity has ever
showed its need of having impressed upon its inmost consciousness.
He was neither a creative religious genius nor even a talented
ecclesiastical organizer; but his criticism of the theology and the
* Cf. Hegler, Geist und Schrift bei Sebastian Franck, p. 16.

81
religion of his day was a valuable positive contribution to the
purity and strength of the evangelical movement as a whole. His
best ideas are those of a genuinely Christian, a specifically Protest
ant mysticism, and these truths need emphatic republication in
every age that is oppressed with an external ecclesiasticism or a life
less orthodoxy. His mysticism had its ample justification, as a
critical and protesting force, both in the facts of the divine revela
tion and in the events of contemporary history. If he failed of
thorough success in his own time, and if the Church since then has
found little use for some of the fantastic elements of his mysticism,
it is only because, like the more radical dissenters, though not to the
same extent, he failed to appreciate the best that his contempo
raries had already achieved, and to realize the historic necessities of
the case with which he was called upon to deal — the necessity of a
truly rational faith, a genuinely scientific theology, that must serve
as the guide to ethical conduct; the necessity of the objectively fixed
Word that must repress the excesses of mere subjectivism; and the
necessity of the divinely established Church that must after some
sort have real means of grace. His mysticism, indeed, bravely
sought to cope with these stern necessities of the situation. By
the nature of the case, however, only a partial success could be
achieved. But the measure of this success is a noble historic monu
ment to the amount of spiritual truth which, despite the errors with
which it was combined in his heterogeneous system, exerted so
beneficent an influence upon his diverse opponents as well as upon
the generations of his noble followers.

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