Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries

Within thy sheltering darkness spin the spheres; Within the shaded hollow of thy wings. The life of things, The changeless pivot of the passing years-- These in thy bosom lie. R...

The ideas developed by spiritual Reformers on the Continent were brought into England by a great variety of carriers and over many routes. Some of the routes were devious and ar...

The struggle for political liberty in the Netherlands forms one of the most dramatic and impressive chapters in modern history, but the story of the long struggle in these same...

Few words are needed in conclusion to point out the historical significance of the movement which we have been studying, and to indicate its connection with the rise and develop...

Among all the Reformers of the sixteenth century who worked at the immense task of recovering, purifying, and restating the Christian Faith, no one was nobler in life and person...

Few men have ever made greater claim to be the bearer of a new revelation than did the humble shoemaker-prophet of Silesia, Jacob Boehme. "I am," he wrote in his earliest book,...

The spiritual struggles which culminated in the great upheaval of the English Commonwealth were the normal fruit of the Reformation spirit, when once it had penetrated the life...

There had appeared a year earlier (1644) a seven-page biography of Boehme which was the first presentation of him to the English reader. This brief sketch contains the well-know...

It is a central idea of mysticism that there is a way to God through the human soul. The gate to Heaven is thus kept, not by St. Peter or by any other saint of the calendar; it...

"I will write a Process or Way which I myself have gone."[1] Most writers who have treated of Boehme have mainly dealt with his _Weltanschauung_--his theosophical view of the Ab...

Sebastian Franck is one of the most interesting figures in the group of German Reformers, a man of heroic spirit and a path-breaking genius, though for many reasons his influenc...

"If thou wilt be a philosopher or naturalist and search into God's being in Nature and discern how it all came to pass, then pray to God for the Holy Spirit to enlighten thee. I...

Reformation history has been far too closely confined to a few main highways of thought, and few persons therefore realize how rich in ideas and how complex in typical religious...

The type of Christianity which I have been calling "spiritual religion," that is, religion grounded in the nature of Reason, finds, at least in England, its noblest expression i...

The powerful religious upheaval in England which reached its culmination during the two middle decades of the seventeenth century, profoundly stirred both the upper and lower in...

One of the greatest tragedies in Christian history is the division of forces which occurred in the Reformation movements of the sixteenth century. Division of forces in the supr...

Principal Tulloch, in his admirable study of the Cambridge Platonists, declares that John Smith was "the richest and most beautiful mind and certainly by far the best writer of...

Hans Denck has generally been enrolled among the Anabaptists, and it is possible to use that name of scorn with such a latitude and looseness that it includes not only Denck but...

The study of Denck in the previous chapter has furnished the main outlines of the type of Christianity which a little group of men, sometimes called "Enthusiasts," and sometimes...

came, saying, Behold, I am God's Eternal Virgin, Wisdom, whom thou hast been enquiring after. I am to unseal the Treasures of God's deep Wisdom unto thee. . . . Wisdom shall be...