len back to an historical view of faith,
whereas the faith which saves can never consist in the outward acceptance
of an historical fact. He who makes salvation dependent on preaching and
the Sacrament, confuses the invisible and the visible Church, _Ecclesia
interna_ and _externa_. The layman is his own priest.

According to Sebastian Franck (1500-45), there are in man, as in everything
else, two principles, one divine and one selfish, Christ and Adam, an
inner and an outer man; if he submits himself to the former (by a timeless
choice), he is spiritual, if to the latter, carnal. God is not the cause
of sin, but man, who turns the divine power to good or evil. He who denies
himself to live God is a Christian, whether he knows and confesses
the Gospel or not. Faith does not consist in assent, but in inner
transformation. The historical element in Christianity and its ceremonial
observances are only the external form and garb (its "figure"), have merely
a symbolic significance as media of communication, as forms of revelation
for the eternal truth, proclaimed but not founded by Christ; the Bible is
merely the shadow of the living Word of God.

Valentin Weigel (born in 1533, pastor in Zschopau from 1567), whose works
were not printed until after his death, combines his predecessors' doctrine
of inner and eternal Christianity with the microcosmos-idea of Paracelsus.
God, who lacks nothing, has not created the world in order to gain, but in
order to give. Man not only bears the earthly world in his body, and the
heavenly world of the angels in his reason (his spirit), but by virtue of
his intellect (his immortal soul) participates in the divine world also. As
he is thus a microcosm and, moreover, an image of God, all his knowledge
becomes self-knowledge, both sensuous perception (which is not caused by
the object, but only occasioned by it), and the knowledge of God. The
literalist knows not God, but he alone who bears God in himself. Man
is favored above other beings with the freedom to dwell in himself or
in God. When man came out from God, he was his own tempter and made himself
proud and selfish. Thus evil, which had before remained hidden, was
revealed, and became sin. As the separation from God is an eternal act, so
also redemption and resurrection form an inner event. Christ is born in
everyone who gives up the I-ness (_Ichheit_); each regenerate man is a son
of God. But no vicarious suffering can save him who does no