Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th CenturiesJones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)
Religion
Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries
Jones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)
Mysticism; Reformers
complete dedication {38} of His spirit in self-giving, and it is
effective for our salvation only when it draws us into a similar way of
living, unites us in spirit with Him and makes us in reality partakers
of His blood spiritually apprehended. Christ is our Mediator in that
He reveals the love of God towards us and moves our will to appreciate
it.[9]
Every step of human progress and of spiritual advance is marked by a
passage from the dominion of the external to the sway and power of
inward experience. God is training us for a time when images, figures,
and picture-book methods will be no longer needed, but all men will
live by the inward Word and have the witness--"the Abba-crying
voice"--in their own hearts. But this process from outward to inward,
from virtue impelled by fear and mediated by law to goodness generated
by love, gives no place for license. Buenderlin has no fellowship with
antinomianism, and is opposed to any tendency which gives rein to the
flesh. The outward law, the external restraint, the discipline of fear
and punishment are to be used so long as they are needed, and the
written word and the pictorial image will always serve as a norm and
standard, but the true spiritual goal of life is the formation of a
rightly fashioned will, the creation of a controlling personal love,
the experience of a guiding inward Spirit, which keep the awakened soul
steadily approximating the perfect Life which Christ has revealed.
The true Church is for Buenderlin as for Denck, the communion and
fellowship of spiritual persons--an invisible congregation;
ever-enlarging with the process of the ages and with the expanding
light of the Spirit. He blames Luther for having stopped short of a
real reformation, of having "mixed with the Midianites instead of going
on into the promised Canaan," and of having failed to dig down to the
fundamental basis of spiritual religion.[10]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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