Such a form of neighbourly love does not suffice to reassure Schwenckfeld as to the method of justification taught by Luther. “We see here that repentance, the renewal of the heart and the crucifixion of the flesh with its lusts and concupiscences, as well as the Christian combat ... are all forgotten.” “How is it possible that such easy indulgence and soft and honeyed sermons should not lead to little account being made of sin, seeing the people are told that God winks at the sins of all those who believe?”[571]
Again and again he returns to the patent fact that “the result of such shameless preaching and teaching is nothing but a grave and damnable abuse of the Evangel of Jesus Christ, since people now make but little account even of many and great sins.”[572]
For Luther to point to the Crucified and tell the believer that “sin is nothing but a devilish spectre and a mere fancy,” was to speak “fanatically.” Luther might write what he pleased, but here, at any rate, he was himself guilty of that fanatism of which he was fond of accusing others.[573] Schwenckfeld himself had been numbered by the preachers among the crazy fanatics.
The Silesian also ruthlessly attacked the imputation of the merits of Christ by means of the Sola Fides.
The Lutherans, even the best of them, imagine their righteousness to be nothing else “but the bare faith, since they believe God accounts them righteous, even though they remain as they were before.” “They should, however, be exhorted to search Holy Scripture and to ask themselves in their hearts whether such faith and righteousness are not rather a human persuasion, mere imposition and self-delusion ... which men invent to justify an impenitent life; not a true, living faith, the gift of the Holy Ghost ... which, as Scripture says, purifies the heart, Acts xv. ..., reconciles consciences, Rom. v. ..., and brings Christ into our hearts, Eph. iii., Gal. ii.”[574]
An instructive parallel and at the same time a severe censure on Luther’s method of building up “faith” on inward assurance is afforded by Schwenckfeld’s account of the experiences and spiritual trials on which he himself had founded his faith. The preachers, insisting on the outward Word, urged that he had no right to appeal to his mere feelings; yet, as he points out, this very thing had been proclaimed from Wittenberg as the right, nay the duty of all.
“In addition to all this they reject the ghostly feeling and that inward sense of the Grace of God which Luther at the outset ... declared to be necessary for salvation, writing that: ‘No one can rightly understand God or the Word of God unless he has it direct from the Holy Ghost.’ No one, however, can receive it from the Holy Ghost unless he experiences it, makes trial of it and feels it; in this experience the Holy Ghost is teaching us as in His own school, outside of which nothing is learned but all is mere delusion, words and vapouring.”[575]
“How would Dr. Luther’s own gloss stand,” Schwenckfeld asks elsewhere, “which he gives on the words of the New Testament, 1 Cor. xi.: ‘Let a man prove himself,’ and where he says: ‘to prove oneself is to feel one’s faith,’ etc.? But the man who feels his faith will assuredly by such a faith—which is a power of God and the very being of the Holy Ghost—have forgiveness of sins and bear Christ in his believing heart.”[576]
He reproaches Luther with having in later days failed to distinguish between the outward Word or preaching and the inward living Word of God. The blunt assertion of the preachers—which was encouraged by “Luther’s unapostolic treatment of the problem of Christian experience”[577]—that faith referred solely to the written Word and was elicited merely by preaching,[578] leads in practice to neglect of those passages of Scripture which speak of the Divine character of faith and of its transmission by the Holy Ghost; owing to the lack of a faith really felt, there was also wanting any “holiness of life worked by the Spirit, and any moral justice and sanctification.”[579]