Self-evidently, these views concerning the means of grace had a corrupting influence also on other doctrines. Saving faith, according to Schwenckfeldt, is not trust in God's promise of pardon for Christ's sake, but an immediate mystical relation of the soul to God. Justification, says he, "is not only forgiveness and non-imputation of sin, but also renewal of the heart." "We must seek our justification and righteousness not in Christ according to His first state [of humiliation], in a manner historical," but according to His state of glorification, in which He governs the Church. In order to enhance the "glory of Christ" and have it shine and radiate in a new light, Schwenckfeldt taught the "deification of the flesh of Christ," thus corrupting the doctrine of the exaltation and of the person of Christ in the direction of Monophysitism. And the more his views were opposed, the more he was enamored of, and engrossed by, them, calling himself the "confessor and lover of the glory of Christ."
Concerning the Lord's Supper, Schwenckfeldt taught that the deified humanity of Christ is really imparted and appropriated, not indeed through bread and wine, but immediately (without the intervention of any medium), internally, spiritually. The words of institution mean: My body, which is given for you, is what bread is, a food, i.e., a food for souls; and the new testament in My blood is a chalice, i.e., a drink for the elect to drink in the kingdom of God. Baptism, says Schwenckfeldt, is the "baptizing of the heavenly High Priest Jesus Christ, which occurs in the believing soul by the Holy Ghost and by fire. Infant baptism is a human ordinance, not merely useless, but detrimental to the baptism of Christ." (Tschackert, 159ff.)
264. The Antitrinitarians.
The first article of the Augsburg Confession makes a special point of rejecting not only the ancient, but also the "modern Samosatenes," i.e., the Antitrinitarians, who in the beginning of the Reformation began their activity in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Germany. Most of these "modern Arians and Antitrinitarians," as they are called in the Twelfth Article of the Formula of Concord came from the skeptical circles of Humanists in Italy. Concerning these rationalists and Epicureans the Apology remarks: "Many [in Italy and elsewhere] even publicly ridicule all religions, or, if they approve anything, they approve such things only as are in harmony with human reason, and regard the rest as fabulous and like the tragedies of the poets." (CONC. TRIGL., 235, 28; C. R. 9, 763.) Pope Leo X was generally regarded as being one of those who spoke of the profitable "fables concerning Christ."
According to a letter of warning to the Christians in Antwerp, 1525, a fanatic (Rumpelgeist) there taught: "Every man has the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our reason and understanding (ingenium et ratio naturalis). Every man believes. There is neither hell nor damnation. Every one will obtain eternal life. Nature teaches that I should do unto my neighbor as I would have him do unto me—to desire which is faith. The Law is not violated by evil lust as long as I do not consent to lust. Who has not the Holy Ghost has no sin for he has no reason." (E. 53, 344; St. L. 21a 730; Enders 5, 147.)
In his report on the Marburg Colloquy, October 5, 1529, Melanchthon remarks: "We have heard that some of them [the Strassburgers] speak of the Deity as the Jews do, as though Christ were not God by nature. (C. R. 1, 1099.) At Marburg, Zwingli remarked that some had spoken incorrectly concerning the Trinity, and that Haetzer had written a book against the divinity of Christ, which he, Zwingli, had not permitted to be published." (1103.)
In a letter of Luther to Bugenhagen, 1532 we read: "Your undertaking [of publishing a writing of Athanasius concerning the Trinity] is Christian and wholesome in this our most corrupt time, in which all articles of faith in general are attacked by the servants of Satan, and the one concerning the Trinity is in particular beginning to be derided confidently by some skeptics and Epicureans. These are ably assisted not only by those Italian grammarians [Humanists] and orators, which they flatter themselves to be, but also by some Italico-German vipers and others, or, as you are accustomed to call them, viper-aspides, who sow their seed here and there in their discourses and writings, and, as Paul says [2 Tim. 2, 17], eat as doth a canker (gar sehr um sich fressen) and promote godlessness, about which they, when among themselves, laugh so complacently and are so happy that one can hardly believe it." (St. L. 14, 326; Enders 9, 252.)
Some Antitrinitarians who affiliated with the Anabaptists have already been referred to. Denk, Haetzer, and others rejected the Apostles' Creed because of their opposition to the doctrine of the Trinity. Haetzer, as stated wrote a book against the deity of Christ in which he denied the tripersonality of God and the preexistence of the Logos, and blasphemously designated the belief in the deity of Christ as "superstition" and the trust in His satisfaction as "drinking on the score of Christ (ein Zechen auf die Kreide Christi)." According to Denk, Christ is merely an example showing us how to redeem ourselves which we are all able to do because there is still within us a seed of the divine Word and light. (Tschackert, 143, 461.) It was of Denk that Capito wrote, 1526: "At Nuernberg the schoolteacher at St. Sebald denied that the Holy Ghost and the Son are equal to the Father, and for this reason he was expelled." (Plitt, Augustana 1, 153.)
At Strassburg the Anabaptists were publicly charged, in 1526, with denying the Trinity; in 1529, with denying the deity of Christ. In 1527 Urban Regius spoke of the Anabaptists in Augsburg as maintaining that Christ was merely a teacher of a Christian life. In the same year Althamer of Nuernberg published his book Against the New Jews and Arians under the Christian Name Who Deny the Deity of Christ. In 1529 Osiander wrote concerning Anabaptists in Nuernberg: "It is well known, and may be proved by their own writings, that they deny and contradict the sublime article of our faith concerning the Holy Trinity, from which it follows immediately that they also deny the deity of Christ." "Christ is not the natural, true Son of God," such was also the accusation made by Justus Menius in his book concerning the Doctrines and Secrets of the Anabaptists. In his Sermons on the Life of Luther, Mathesius said "Now the Anabaptists speak most contemptuously of the deity of Jesus Christ…. This was their chief article that they despised the written Word, the Holy Bible, and believed nothing or very little of Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God."
265. Franck, Campanus, Ochino, Servetus, Blandrata, etc.