} of "justification by faith." From the inception of the
Reformation movement there had appeared a tendency to regard the
exercise of "faith" as all that was required for human salvation.
Luther did not mean it so, but it was the easy line of least resistance
to hold that "faith" had a magic effect in the invisible realm, that is
to say: As soon as a person exercised "faith," God counted the "faith"
for righteousness, and regarded that person as "justified." The
important operation was thus in a region outside the soul. The
momentous shift was not in the personal character of the individual,
but in the way the individual was regarded and valued in the heavenly
estimates. It was the discovery of the prevalence of this crude and
magical reliance on "faith" which first drove Schwenckfeld to a deeper
study of the problems of religion. It was the necessity that he felt
to discover some way by which man himself could be actually renewed,
transformed, recreated, and _made_ righteous--rather than merely
counted or reckoned righteous by some magical transaction--that made
him an independent reformer and set him on his solitary way.

To this deep and central question of religion, How is a human soul
saved? there were in Schwenckfeld's day four well-known answers:

(1) There was the answer of the Church in which he was born. Salvation
is by Grace, mediated through the sacramental channels of the
mysterious and divinely founded Church. Man's part consists in the
performance of the "works" which the Church requires of him and the
proper use of the sacramental means of Grace. Through these
sacramental channels actual Grace, substantial divine help, comes into
man and works the miracle of salvation in him.

(2) There was the answer of the great mystics, not always clear and
simple, but very profound and significant. The Ground and the Abyss of
the soul is one substance with the eternal and absolute Godhead.
Finite strivings, isolated purposes, selfish aims, centrifugal pursuits
are vain and illusory. We lose our lives in so far as we live {76} in
self-will and in self-centred joys. The way home, the way of
salvation, is a return to that Ground-Reality from which we have gone
out--a return to union and oneness of Life with the infinite Godhead.

(3) The third answer is that of Luther: "Salvation is by faith." This
seems at first to be a dynamic answer. It breaks in on the distracted
world like a new moral trumpet-call t