was the task
to which Schwenckfeld now felt himself summoned. It seemed to him that
the entire basis of salvation should be grasped in a way quite
different from Luther's way of formulation, and this called for a
restatement of the whole revelation of God in Christ and of the work of
Christ in the soul of man.[7]

Luther's final break with the spiritual Reformer of Silesia, which
occurred in 1527, was primarily occasioned by Schwenckfeld's teaching
on the meaning and value of the Lord's Supper, though their difference
was by no means confined to that point. Schwenckfeld's position had
culminated in 1526 in a suspension of the celebration of the Lord's
Supper--the so-called _Stillstand_--until a right understanding and
true practice of it according to the will of the Lord should be
revealed.[8] "We know at present of no apostolic commission," he
wrote, "nor {68} again do we make any claim to be regarded as apostles,
for we have neither received the fulness of the Holy Spirit nor the
apostolic seal for such an office. We dwell in humility and ascribe
nothing to ourselves, except that we bear witness to Christ, invite men
to Christ, preach Christ and His infinite work of salvation, and labour
as much as we can that Christ may be truly known."[9]

Into the bitter controversy over the Sacrament--a controversy between
noble and sincere Reformers, which forms the supreme internal tragedy
of the Reformation--we need not now enter. We shall in the proper
place give Schwenckfeld's position upon it, though only in so far as it
belongs in an exposition of his type of spiritual Christianity; but the
immediate effect of his position and practices was such a collision
with Luther, and the arousal of such hostility on the part of the
Lutherans of Silesia, that the continued pursuit of Schwenckfeld's
mission in that country became impossible. He was, however, not
expelled by edict, but under compulsion of the existing situation; and
in order not to be a trouble to his friend, the Duke of Liegnitz, he
went in 1529 into voluntary exile, never to return. For thirty years
he was a wanderer without a permanent home on the earth, but he could
thank his Lord Christ, as he did, for granting him through all these
years an inward freedom, and for bringing him into "His castle of
Peace." He once wrote: "If I had wanted a good place on earth, if I
had cared more for temporal than for eternal things, and if I would
have deserted my Christ