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guide for all inward revelations (ii.r aqq.). As not every one possesses, by nature, " his immanent living Word " (Christlichen orthodoxischen Buchern, p. 887) the renewing of man depends upon the immediate efficacy of Christ in the Holy Ghost; who, however, is intrinsically identical with the historic incarnated Christ (ut sup., pp. 566 sqq., p. 324; Vom Worte Gottes, li.r; Von der heitigen Schraft, cviii.). The main ground for separating the operations of Word and Spirit, and thereby ascribing regenerative grace exclusively to the immediate activity of the Spirit, lies for Schwenckfeld, as for the Reformed, in his distinctly expressed predestinarianism: God wills that all his gifts flow from the same celestial fountain into the hearts of the elect, through Jesus Christ, the head of the Church in the Holy Ghost; and that no external medium can be set up between them, not even as between the head and the body (De cursu verbi Dei, xiii.). Beyond these deductions, in the main, on the relation of the Word and the Spirit, no closer construction is warranted. Schwenckfeld may be said to have been the author of that mediating spiritualistic trend of thought after the Reformation (" middle way "), which, holding fast to the doctrine of grace and redemption, historically obtained by Christ, yet attributes the operation of that grace upon the predestinated to the immediate activity of the Spirit alone, allowing, however, a certain importance to Scripture and preaching.

If Schwenckfeld did not concede religious significance, in the strict sense, to Holy Scripture, his valuation of the confessions must needs be yet slighter. When the matter came to a thorough test,

he stood in accord with not a single i. Creed doctrine of the Augsburg Confession.

and The whole Confession, and more so the Sacrament. obligatory subscription to the same, had its place, in his view, among the statutory measures for the founding of a Church; which measures he disputed as conflicting with the Spirit and freedom. His ideal of church organization was of separate congregations, which were to be brought together, at most, into a moral and holy fellowship by the creation of a proper jurisdiction. Not improbable is it that he inspired certain merely sporadic tendencies of Luther. On such grounds Schwenckfeld could not ascribe to the sacraments a real character as vehicles of grace. In the doctrine of baptism, he has been classed with the Anabaptists, but incorrectly: for, though he was atone with them in rejecting the baptism of infants (according to some of his utterances, he was willing to retain that practise as an outward ceremony), he nevertheless regarded the baptism of adults as equally unavailing. Schwenckfeld's doctrine of the Lord's Supper is rooted, first, in his general theory of the essence of the means of grace; then, in his construction of the meaning of the words of institution; and, finally, in his peculiar Christology. In his exposition of the words of institution, Schwenekfeld, resting upon a " visitation from on high," advanced the view that the words " This cup is the new testament " (cf. Luke xxii. 20) are not according to the original rendering by the Holy Spirit. The demonstrative touto is not an adjunct of the

word for " cup "; but, being separated by the article, to, it is absolute, " This." Afterward Luke and Paul, by way of emendation, added the word " cup

or " drink." Accordingly, the Lord speaks of the character of his blood, saying: " This (drink) is the new covenant in my blood " (Epistolar, ii. 16). Complemented with John vi., the proper sense of the eucharistic words proved to be: " My body is this; namely, bread, in the signification of spiritual food. My blood is this; namely, drink in the signification of spiritual drink for the soul.

If Schwenckfeld not only dismisses from the very words of institution all manner of reference to any intimate, real connection of the elements with Christ's body and blood in the Roman Catholic or Lutheran sense, his Christology, or still more strictly, his theory of the relation between the divine and the earthly, debarred him from such an assumption. He combined, even more closely than the Lutherans, the humanity of Christ with his divinity; so that a conclusion for the physical ubiquity of Christ would not have been illogical, and so far the Philippists (q.v.) were correct in regarding him as the author of that doctrine; but, on -the whole, he was unwilling to bring deity, including the deity enveloping the humanity of Christ, into closer relation with anytaing created. Forasmuch, then, as the divine never mediates itself through the created, the presence of Christ is certainly not mediated by the eucharistic elements; and their apprehension spiritually by faith is no longer impeded. Accordingly, Schwenckfeld's doctrine of the Lord's Supper is to be classified with the apiritualisticdynamic; and, among the Reformation theories, is in closest affinity with Calvin's.

Schwenckfeld's Christology grew out of his conception of the relation between the divine and the human in general. Everything human, whatever comes into being by creative process,