more by the vivid portraits of
Christ in the Gospels, by the words from His lips recorded there, and
by the experiences of the apostles and the development of the primitive
Church. He never doubts or questions the inspiration of the
Scriptures; quite the contrary, he holds that Scripture is "given by
God" and is an inexhaustible well of inspired truth from which the soul
can endlessly draw. The actual content of Christian faith is supplied
by the historical revelation; {74} but Schwenckfeld always insists that
written words, however inspired, are still external to the soul, and
merely record historical events which have happened to others in other
ages. "If man," he writes, "is to understand spiritual things and is
to know and judge rightly, he must bring the divine Light to the
Scriptures, the Spirit to the letter, the Truth to the picture, and the
Master to His created work. . . . In a word, to understand the
Scriptures a man must become a new man, a man of God; he must be in
Christ who gave forth the Scriptures."[2] That which is to change the
inner nature of a man must be something personally experienced and not
external to him; must be in its own nature as spiritual as the soul
itself is and not material, as written words are. "The pen cannot
completely bring the heart to the paper, nor can the mouth entirely
express the well of living water within itself."[23] The Bible leads
to Christ and bears witness of Him as no other book does, but it is not
Christ. And even the Bible remains a closed book until Christ opens
it.[24] The Scriptures tell, as no other writings do, of the Word of
God and its life-operations in the world, but they are still not the
Word of God. The spiritual realities of life cannot be settled by
laboriously piling up texts of Scripture, by subtle theological
dialectic, or by learned exegesis of sacred words. If these spiritual
realities are to become real and effective to us, it must be through
the direct relation of the human spirit with the divine Spirit--the
inward spiritual Word of God.[25] "He who will see the truth must have
God for eyes."[26]

Schwenckfeld's view of the process of salvation and the permanent
illumination of the reborn soul by a real incoming divine
substance--whether called Word or Seed--is the _dynamic_ feature of his
Christianity. He is endeavouring to find a foundation for a religious
energism that will avoid the dangers which beset Luther's principle
{75