endeavour {32} to found a Church, to organize a sect, or to gain a
personal following, because it was a deeply settled idea with them all
that the true Church is invisible. It is a communion of saints,
including those of all centuries, past and present, who have heard and
obeyed the divine inner Word, and through co-operation with God's
inward revelation and transforming Presence have risen to a mystical
union of heart and life with Him. Their apostolic mission--for they
fully believed that they were "called" and "sent"--was to bear witness
to this eternal Word within the soul, to extend the fellowship of this
invisible Zion, and to gather out of all lands and peoples and visible
folds of the Church those who were ready for membership in the one
family and brotherhood of the Spirit of God. They made the mistake,
which has been very often made before and since, of undervaluing
external helps and of failing to appreciate how important is the
visible fellowship, the social group, working at common tasks and
problems, the temporal Church witnessing to its tested faith and
proclaiming its message to the ears of the world; but they did
nevertheless perform a very great service in their generation, and they
are the unrecognized forerunners of much which we highly prize in the
spiritual heritage of the modern world.

The two men whose spiritual views we are about to study are, I am
afraid, hardly even "names" to the world of to-day. They were not on
the popular and winning side and they have fallen into oblivion, and
the busy world has gone on and left them and their little books to lie
buried in a forgotten past. They are surely worthy of a resurrection,
and those who take the pains will discover that the ideas which they
promulgated never really died, but were quick and powerful in the
formation of the inner life of the religious societies of the English
Commonwealth, and so of many things which have touched our inner world
to-day.

Johann Buenderlin, like his inspirer Denck, was a scholar of no mean
rank. He understood Hebrew; he knew the Church Fathers both in Greek
and Latin; he {33} makes frequent reference to Greek literature for
illustration, and he was well versed in the dialectic of the schools,
though he disapproved of it as a religious method.[1] He was enrolled
as a student in the University of Vienna in 1515, under the name of
Johann Wunderl aus Linz, Linz being a town of Upper Austria. After
four years