No book appeared in England before 1648--the date of the translation of Weigel's _Life of Christ_--which more closely approached the Quaker position. That religion must have an inward seat and origin; that divine things must be learned of God, are taken as axiomatic truths throughout this book. If a man is to _see_, he must have eyes of his own; if he is to teach, he must have the Word of God within him. People say that "there can be no true Faith without outward preaching ministry." That is not so, Weigel declares. The way to heaven is open to hungry penitent souls everywhere, although, as is the case with infants, they may hear no sermons at all: "Faith comes by inward hearing. Good books, outward verbal ministry have their place, they testify to the real Treasure, they are witnesses to the inner Word within us, but Faith is not tied to books; it is a new nativity which {147} cannot be found in a book. He who hath the inward Schoolmaster loseth nothing of his Salvation although all preachers should be dead and all books burned."[23] Many take great pains to be baptized, and "to hear sermons of their hired priests," and to use the Lord's Supper, and to read theological books, who, nevertheless, show no "spiritual profit" therefrom. The reason is that "Truth runs into no one by a pipe!"[24] "In the Church of men--the man-made Church--the measuring-line," or standard, he says, is the written Scripture, according to one's own interpretation, or according to books, or according to University men; but in the true Church the measuring-reed is the inward Word, the Spirit of Christ, within the believer. Those who are in the Universities and Churches of men have Christ in their mouths, and they have a measuring-reed by their side--the inhabitants of God's Church on the other hand have the Life of Christ and the testing-standard within themselves.[25] Those who are "nominal professors" hang salvation on a literal knowledge of the merit secured by Christ's death; the true believer knows that salvation is never a purchase, is never outwardly effected, but is a new self, a new spirit, a new relation to God: "Man must cease to be what he is before he can come to be another kind of person."[26] Outward baptism and external supper may, if one wishes, be used as symbols of the soul's supreme events, but they cannot rightly be thought of as effecting any change of themselves in the real nature of the man; only Christ the Life-bringer, only the resident work of God within the soul, can produce the transformation from old self to new self. "Salvation is not tyed to sacraments."[27]