d accept
damnation for the love of God, since he knows in his heart that "God is
so wholly good that He can give to such a man only what is highest and
best, and that is Himself!"[32] That is to say, he who is willing to
be damned for the love of God never will be damned!

But salvation must never be conceived as something which is the result
of a transaction. It is from beginning to end a life-process and can
in no way be separated from character and personal attitude of will.
"He who depends on the merit of Christ," he says, "and yet continues in
a fleshly, wicked life, regards Christ precisely as in former times the
heathen held their gods. He who really believes that Christ has saved
him can no longer be a servant of sin, for no one believes rightly
until he leaves his old life."[33] "It is not enough," he elsewhere
writes, "that God is in thee; thou must also be in God, that is,
partake of the life of God. It does not help to have God if thou dost
not honour Him. It is no avail to call thyself His child _if thou dost
not behave thyself like a child_!"[34] He insists that no one can be
"called righteous" or be "counted righteous" until he actually _is_
righteous. Nothing can be "imputed" to a man which is not ethically
and morally present as a living feature of his character and conduct.
No one, he truly says, can know _Christ as a means of salvation_ unless
he follows Him in his life. He who does not witness to Christ in his
daily walk grows into a different person from the one he is called to
be.[35] The person who lives on in sin does not really know God, and,
{27} to use his fine figure; is like a man who has lost his home and
gone astray, and does not even know that he is _at home_, when his
Father has found him and has welcomed him back, but still goes on
hunting for home and for Father, since he does not recognize his home
or his Father when he has found them![36]

Salvation, then, for Hans Denck is wholly an inward process, initiated
from above through the Divine Word, the Christ, whom we know outwardly
as the historical Person of the Gospel, and whom we know inwardly as
the Revealer of Light and Love, the Witness in us against sin, the
Voice of the Father to our hearts, calling us home, the Goal of our
spiritual quest, the Alpha and the Omega of all religious truth and all
spiritual experience. The Way to God, he says, is Christ inwardly and
spiritually known.[37] But however audible the inner