"spiritual religion," and that the masses are inclined to go with those who supply them with a variety which is spectacular and which produces emotional thrills. Our last definite information concerning Buenderlin shows him to have been in Constance in 1530, from which city he was expelled as a result of information against the "soundness" of his doctrine, furnished in a letter from OEcolampadius. From this time he drops completely out of notice, and we are left only with conjectures. One possible reference to him occurs in a letter from Julius Pflug, the Humanist, to Erasmus in 1533. Pflug says that a person has newly arrived in Litium (probably Luetzen) who teaches that there are no words of Christ as a warrant for the celebration of the Sacrament of the Supper, and that it is to be partaken of only in a spiritual way. He adds that God had intervened to protect the people from such heresy and that the heretic had been imprisoned. The usual penalty for such heresy was probably imposed. This description would well fit Johann Buenderlin, but we can only guess that he was the opponent of the visible Sacrament mentioned in the letter which Erasmus received in 1533.[3] Buenderlin's religious contribution is preserved in three little books which are now extremely rare, the central ideas of which I shall give in condensed form and largely in my own words, though I have faithfully endeavoured to render him fairly.[4] His style is difficult, {35} mainly because he abounds in repetition and has not learned to write in an orderly way. I am inclined to believe that he sometimes wrote, as he would no doubt preach, in a prophetic, rapturous, spontaneous fashion, hardly steering his train of thought by his intellect, but letting it go along lines of least resistance and in a rhythmic flood of words; his central ideas of course all the time holding the predominant place in his utterance. He is essentially a mystic both in experience and in the ground and basis of his conception of God and man. This mystical feature is especially prominent in his second book on why God became incarnate in Christ, and I shall begin my exposition with that aspect of his thought.