tendencies which are big with futurity, and who
thereby seems to be far ahead of his age and not explicable by any
lineage or pedigree. Sebastian Franck was a man of this sort. He was
extraordinarily unfettered by medieval inheritance, and he would be able
to adjust himself with perfect ease to the spirit and ideas of the modern
world if he could be dropped forward into it.

He is especially interesting and important as an exponent and interpreter
of a religion based on inward authority because he unites, in an unusual
manner, the intellectual ideals of the Humanist with the experience and
attitude of the Mystic. In him we have a Christian thinker who is able
to detach himself from the theological formulations of his own and of
earlier times, and who could draw, with breadth of mind and depth of
insight, from the wells of the great original thinkers of all ages, and
who, besides, in his own deep and serious soul could feel the inner flow
of central realities. He was no doubt {47} too much detached to be a
successful Reformer of the historical Church, and he was too little
interested in external organisations to be the leader of a new sect; but
he was, what he aspired to be, a sincere and unselfish contributor to the
spread of the Kingdom of God, and a significant apostle of the invisible
Church.[1]

Sebastian Franck was born in 1499 at Donauwuerth in Schwabia. He began
his higher education in the University of Ingolstadt, which he entered
March 26, 1515. He went from Ingolstadt to Heidelberg, where he
continued his studies in the Dominican College which was incorporated
with the University. Here he was associated in the friendly fellowship
of student life with two of his later opponents, Martin Frecht and Martin
Bucer, and here he came under the influence of Humanism which in the
scholarly circles in Heidelberg was beginning to take a place along with
the current Scholasticism of the period. While a student in Heidelberg
he first heard Martin Luther speak on the insufficiency of works and on
faith as the way of salvation, and though he must have felt the power of
this great personality and the freshness of the message, he was not yet
ripe for a radical change of front.[2] He seems to have felt through
these student years that a new age was in process of birth, but though he
was following the great events he remained to the end of his University
period an adherent of the ancient Church and was ordained a priest