he beginning are
patriarchs living in the dawn of the world under the guidance of inward
vision, and at the end are saints and heretics, whom Franck finds among
all races, bravely following the same inward Light, now after the ages
grown clearer and more luminous, and sufficient for those who will
patiently and faithfully heed it, while the real "heretics" for him are
"heretics of the letter." "We ought to act carefully before God"--this
is Franck's constant testimony--"hold to God alone and look upon Him as
the cause of all things, and we ought always in all matters to notice
what God says in us, to pay attention to the witness of our hearts, and
never to think, or act, against our conscience. For everything does not
hang upon the bare letter of Scripture; everything hangs, rather, on the
spirit of Scripture and on a spiritual understanding of the inner meaning
of what God has said. If we weigh every matter carefully we shall find
its true meaning in the depth of our spiritual understanding and by the
mind of Christ. Otherwise, the dead letter of Scripture would make us
all heretics and fools, for everything can be bedecked and defended with
texts, therefore let nobody confound himself and confuse himself with
Scripture, but let every one weigh and test Scripture to see how it fits
his own heart. If it is against his conscience and the Word within his
own soul, then be sure he has not reached the right meaning, according to
the mind of the Spirit, for the Scriptures must give witness to the
Spirit, never against it."[8]

{51}

The _Chronica_ naturally aroused a storm of opposition against this bold
advocate of the inner Way. Even Erasmus, who had been canonized in
Franck's list of heretics, joined in the outcry against the chronicler of
the world's spiritual development. His book was confiscated, he was
temporarily imprisoned, and for the years immediately following he was
never secure in any city where he endeavoured to pursue his labours. He
supported himself and his family, now by the humble occupation of a
soap-boiler, now by working in a printing-house, sometimes in Strasbourg,
sometimes in Esslingen, and sometimes in Ulm, only asking that he "might
not be forced to bury the talent which God had given him, but might be
allowed to use it for the good of the people of God."

In 1534 his _Weltbuch_ appeared from a press in Tuebingen, and the same
year he published his famous _Paradoxa_, which contains the m