961 



ZWINGLI. 



ZWINGLI. 



hospital for the sick ; that of the Augustinea into an asylum for the 

 destitute. In every instance the property of the church was neither 

 swallowed up by the treasury nor embezzled by grasping individuals. 

 It was guaranteed by the state, and made into a distinct fund for the 

 purposes of education, religious instruction, and charity. Vested 

 rights were respected, and a decent regard was observed towards the 

 feelings and prejudices of the old occupants. This mode of secularisa- 

 tion of church property, so very different from the system of spolia- 

 tion and plunder pursued in other countries, then and in our own days, 

 even by states calling themselves Roman Catholic, is one of the bright 

 features of the Swiss reformation, for the other reformed cantons 

 generally acted upon the same principle of honesty which Zwingli 

 proclaimed and enforced at Zurich. 



Zwingli was commissioned by the government to organise a system 

 of public instruction adapted to the awakened intelligence of the age. 

 He reformed the public schools, appointed new professors for the 

 classical languages, and founded an academy for theological studies. 

 He appointed Conrad Pellican, a native of Alsace, to one of the chairs 

 of divinity, and Rudolf Collinus, of Luzern, to that of Greek : this was 

 in 1526. 



The Anabaptists, a fanatical sect, the wild offshot of the Reforma- 

 tion, who among other vagaries wished to establish a community of 

 goods and a commonwealth independent of magistrates or government, 

 made their appearance in the canton of Zurich. Zwingli had several 

 conferences with some of their leaders : he tried to convince them of 

 the impropriety and impracticability of their schemes, but all to no 

 purpose : disturbances were excited, the Anabaptists, being warned by 

 the Council, refused to submit; they stirred up the ignorant people 

 to acts of violence, until the government was obliged to resort to 

 measures of severity in order to restore tranquillity. 



Zwingli did not attend the conference held at Baden in Aargau, in 

 1526, in presence of the deputies of all the cantons, in which Eckius, 

 chancellor of the University of Ingolstadt, challenged the theologians 

 of the Reformation. The council of Zurich would not allow Zwiugli 

 to go, as there was a manifest intention of seizing his person and con- 

 demning him as a heretic. CEcolampadius, who was less known and 

 less obnoxious to the Romanists, undertook to answer the arguments 

 of Eckius, but the majority of the cantons being Roman Catholic, the 

 diet supported the resolutions of Eckius and Faber, grand-vicar of 

 the Bishop of Constance, to the effect that Zwingli and his adherents 

 should be considered as heretics, and as such excommunicated, and it 

 condemned all changes in doctrine or worship, and forbade the sale of 

 heretical books. The cantons of Bern, Ziirich, Basel, Schaffhausen, 

 Glarus, and Appenzell protested against this decision ; but the Roman 

 Catholic cantons began to act upon it, and arrested and put to death 

 several of the Reformed preachers within their territories. 



At the beginning of 1528 Zwingli repaired to a conference held at 

 Bern, by order of the senate of that canton. He was attended by 

 (Ecolampadius, Bullinger, Colliuus, and Pellican, and by Bucer and 

 Capito, preachers at Strasbourg. The conference lasted nineteen days, 

 and as it was laid down as a preliminary principle that no argument 

 would be admitted which was not grounded on a text of Scripture, 

 the Reformed divines obtained a full advantage over their opponents. 

 The consequence was that the important canton of Bern publicly 

 embraced the Reformation. 



In September 1529, Zwingli repaired with (Ecolampadius and others 

 to Marburg to hold a conference with Luther and Melanchthon. They 

 agreed upon the principal points of faith, and signed together fourteen 

 articles, containing the essential doctrines of their common belief: 

 they only differed upon the subject of the Eucharist. Luther main- 

 tained the doctrine of the real presence, while Zwingli, in his ' Com- 

 mentary on True and False Religion,' had asserted that "the outward 

 symbols of the blood and body of Christ undergo no supernatural 

 change in the Eucharist." Zwingli and Luther, after much discussion, 

 parted, still in controversy, but not in anger. Zwiogli was averse 

 from dogmatism, and he did not pretend to erect his own ideas into 

 articles of faith. In his ' Exposition of the Christian Faith,' which he 

 addressed shortly before his death to King Francis I., while" he admits 

 the necessity of justification by faith for all those to whom the Gospei 

 has been made known, he discards the sentence of sweeping condemna- 

 tion against those who have not been acquainted with the Scripture, 

 and he expresses his belief that " all good men who have fulfilled the 

 laws engraven on their consciences, whatever age or country they may 

 have lived in, will partake of eternal felicity." 



In the year 1531, after several angry and hostile remonstrations 

 between the Roman Catholic and the Reformed cantons, war actually 

 broke out. The Reformed cantons, and Zurich in particular, com- 

 plained of the persecutions to which their fellow-believers were subject, 

 not only when found within the territory of the Roman Catholic can- 

 tons, but also on the neutral ground of Thurgau, Baden, and the 

 other common subject bailiwicks, where the bailli or governor for the 

 time happened to belong to a Roman Catholic state. The Roman 

 Catholics complained of the interference of Zurich with the territories 

 of the Abbot of St. Gall, where the commissioners from Zurich had 

 proclaimed liberty of conscience. The grounds of the dispute were of 

 a mixed nature, resulting from religious and political jealousy. The 

 Roman Catholic cantons broadly refused liberty of conscience to their 

 citizens or subjects, on the plea that it was contrary to the doctrine 



B10G. DIV. VOL. VI. 



of their church. Bern and Zurich came to the determination of 

 stopping the supplies of provisions which Luzern and the forest can- 

 tons were in the habit of procuring from or through the territories o f 

 the other two, forbidding the citizens of the Waldstatten to frequent 

 the markets of Bern and Zurich, and enforcing a kind of blockade 

 which was severely felt by the mountain cantons, which, being chiefly 

 pastoral, depended for their supply of corn, salt, and other necessaries 

 on the markets of their more favoured neighbours. The five cantons 

 of Luzern, Zug, Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden declared war against 

 Ziirich and Bern, and their troops advanced to Cappel, a village on the 

 road from Zug to Zurich, and within the territory of the latter canton. 

 The council of Zurich, which was far from unanimous, was taken by 

 surprise, for it did not expect so sudden an attack. A few hundred 

 militia were posted at Cappel, and a body of about 2000 more were 

 ordered to reinforce them in haste, and Zwingli received orders from 

 the council to accompany and encourage them. On taking leave of 

 his friends, he told them that their cause was good, but was ill-de- 

 fended ; that his life, as well as the lives of many excellent men who 

 wished to restore religion to its primitive simplicity, would be sacri- 

 ficed : but no matter, said he, " God will not abandon his servants; he 

 will come to their assistance when you think all is lost." 



On arriving at the field of battle the disproportion of the two hosts 

 became visible. The men of the five cantons, nearly 8000 Btrong, 

 attacked the Ziirichers, by whom they were repulsed at first ; but a 

 body of the former passing through a wood, which had been left 

 unguarded, turned the position of the Ziirichers, and fell upon their 

 rear. Confusion became general among the Ziirichers, most of whom 

 were killed and the rest dispersed. Zwingli received a mortal wound 

 and fell, but not senseless. Some Catholic soldiers passing by, with- 

 out knowing who he was, offered to fetch a confessor, which he refused. 

 They then exhorted him to recommend his soul to the Virgin Mary, 

 to which .Zwingli replied by a negative motion of the head. One of 

 the soldiers then ran him through with his sword, saying that he 

 ought to die, being an obstinate heretic. The next day, the body, 

 being recognised, was burnt, and his ashes scattered to the wind, 

 amidst the acclamations of the men of the five cantons. Zwingli was 

 forty-seven years of age when ha died. The battle of Cappel was 

 fought on the llth of October 1531. 



Zwingli was a very remarkable man. Inferior perhaps to Luther in 

 fiery eloquence, and to Calvin in logical acuteness, he was possessed of 

 deeper learning and more consistency and sobriety of thought than 

 the German reformer, and had more candour and charity than he of 

 Geneva. For piety of life, sincerity of purpose, and knowledge of 

 the Scriptures, he is inferior to none of the reformers of the 16tb 

 century. 



His works, written some in Latin and some in German, consist ot 

 controversial treatises, expositions of his doctrines, epistles, notes, and 

 commentaries on the book of Genesis, on Isaiah, and Jeremiah, on the 

 Gospels, and on the Epistles of Paul, James, and John ; treatises on 

 original sin, on Providence, on true and false religion, on the certainty 

 and clearness of the word of God, and others. They were collected 

 and published at Zurich in 3 vols. 4to, in 1581, with an 'Elenchus 

 articulorum,' consisting of sixty-seven articles or conclusions gathered 

 from the works of Zwingli, with explanations. Myconius, J. G. Hess, 

 Usteri, and Vogelin have written biographies of Zwingli ; and Hottin- 

 ger, in his history of the Swiss Reformation, has spoken of him at 

 length. The Life of Zwiugli, by Hess, has been translated into 

 English by Lucy Aikin ; and the Life and Times of Zwingli by J. J. 

 Hottinger, by Professor T. C. Porter. 



The disciples of Zwingli received the name of ZWINGLIAXS, and 

 consequently that name was given to the reformed churches of German 

 Switzerland in general. Owing to their controversy with the Lutherans 

 concerning the real presence in the Eucharist, they were also called 

 ' Sacramentarians.' But the name which they themselves assumed 

 was that of Evangelicals, which after a time displaced the other two. 

 They are also called by the name of the Reformed Churches of Swit- 

 zerland, as distinct from that of Protestants, which applies more par- 

 ticularly to the German Reformed Churches, in consequence of the 

 ' protest ' delivered to the Diet of Spires, in April 1529. It ought to 

 be observed however that the Lutherans were not alone in signing the 

 protest, as many towns of Germany and the Landgrave of Hesse, 

 whose tenets were -like those of the Zwinglians or Sacramentarians, 

 also joined in it ; so that the appellation of Protestant is not confined 

 to the Lutheran Church, but applies in an historical sense to the 

 German reformed churches in general. The Swiss had no participation 

 in the protest, which was a political act of the German states. 



The Swiss cantons and towns which embraced the reformed doc- 

 trines as preached by Zwingli, did not constitute one compact and 

 uniform church; having no bishops or hierarchy, and being politically 

 divided into independent republics, or municipalities, each canton had 

 its synod or assembly of pastors, which regulated all ecclesiastical 

 affairs, in concert with the lay authority. Zwingli had from the 

 beginning inculcated the principle of subjection to the magistrates in 

 matters concerning temporal discipline and jurisdiction. Spiritual 

 matters alone were left entirely to the pastors. We read of the church 

 of Zurich, the church of Basel, the church of Bern, and others ; they 

 all called each other sisters they all lived in communion with one 

 another they all agreed in the fundamental points of faith, bat each. 



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