Welcome to Central Schwenkfelder Church

In 1858 Rev Dr F R Anspach produced a translation of some of Caspar Schwenckfeld's writings from seventeenth century German. His hope was to place the teachings of Schwenckfeld in an accessible form for laity. Over the next few months, we will be sequentially reproducing some of these sermonettes from his work entitled The Heavenly Balm and the Divine Physician or Jesus Christ, the True Physician, and Poor Sinful Man, the Wounded and Sick Patient (Baltimore: Abraham Heydrick, 1858). It reads a little heavy, but bear with it!

When our beloved Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, called Matthew, the publican, to become His disciple, that he might be an apostle and evangelist, the latter made a feast in honor to his Lord, and many publicans and sinners sat at table with Him and His disciples. But when the scribes and Pharisees saw this, they murmured and said to his disciples, Why does your Master eat with publicans and sinners? When Jesus heard this, he said unto them: The whole need not the physician, but they that are sick; but go learn what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice; for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Matthew 9:13. Luke 5:31, 32.

Among other profitable things which our Lord Jesus presents and teaches in this portion of the Gospel, he first pictures the depravity, the inherited disease and misery of human nature, in connection with the grace of Almighty God, and His own exalted office as the anointed of God, which He performs in the restoration of man to the Divine favor. As man through the disobedience and fall of Adam became thoroughly depraved, diseased and frail, and now, as a poor sinner, stands in need of mercy, grace and help: thus, on the other hand, Jesus is the true Saviour, the only one who can heal the soul - the Physician, the Helper and the Redeemer of man.

Our heavenly Father, after investing his Son with all power, and giving him a name above every other name, offered him to all men as their physician and Saviour, and clothed Him with the office of healing the spiritually diseased: i.e. He is given to save us from our sins; therefore shall the sin-sick seek no other physician, but hasten to Jesus and confide only in His help and counsel. For such power and like office and remedies are nowhere else found, neither can they appertain to any one but Him; and he who presumes to cure souls by human power and wisdom, will only destroy them and conduct them to ruin.

Above all things should we diligently, by the exercise of Christian faith, study, ponder, understand, and impress upon our minds what we are by nature, what advantage Christ the Son of God is to us, and why He became incarnate, and what the efficacy and strength of His grace accomplish in us; how and by what means the Divine Physician of our souls is to meet the wants and remove the woes of our being. This He images in this parable and by many other beautiful representations in the gospel; so that a sorrowful sinner, who ponders these things and believes the word of God, finds his heart overflowing with joy, for the word of the Lord is true, and what He has spoken, He will surely perform. Ps. 33:4

Therefore, I have, through the grace of God, to the praise of Jesus our Lord, and for the comfort of all afflicted and contrite consciences something to write concerning this physician and his heavenly balm, (As also concerning the sickness) that I may soothe the distressed. Let us however also consider and be admonished in regard to original sin and its fatal tendencies, which we have inherited from Adam, that we may more fully understand our state by nature, to the end that we may more earnestly seek the help and balm of this great Physician, and that, in the lively exercise of faith, we may obediently submit to his healing power.