913 



Z \VINGLI. 



ZWINQLI. 



9C4 



drew up ite formulary or profession of faith. At last the want of a 

 common bond among them, like the confession of Augsburg for the 

 Lutheran*, was felt. The impulse however came from Germany. In 

 1.166 the Erappror Maximilian II. convoked a diet at Augsburg to 

 Kct'l'i the political disputes amonsr the various states of Germany 

 which arose from the difference of religion. The Lutherans endea- 

 voured to keep out the Sacramentarians, as they styled them, from the 

 general pacification of Germany ; and above all, they strove to exclude 

 Frederic III., elector-palatine, who was at the head of that party. 

 Frederic asked the advice of Bullinger, the friend of Zwingli, whom 

 he had succeeded as head pastor at Zurich, and requested him to 

 forward him a confession of faith, which he might lay before the diet. 

 Shortly before this Bullinger had privately written an abstract of his 

 belief, as a legacy to his friends, during a pestilence which desolated 

 Switzerland, and by which he had been attacked himself, but 

 recovered, after losing his wife and children. He now sent it to the 

 elector, who wrote an answer to testify bis joy at the perusal of 

 Bullinger's confession. All the reformed cantons and towns of Swit- 

 zerland then said, "Why not adopt it aa our own ?" And it was so 

 adopted. 



'' Every confession of faith," observes a modern Swiss historian, 

 " partakes of the character of the age in which it is written, but that 

 of Bullinger may be said to have been better than its age. It was 

 neither the offspring of polemical disputation, nor the cold, calculating 

 work of an assembly of theologians ; it was the effusion of a pious 

 mind, animated by a wish for peace. It was the work of a man who, 

 when he wrote it, thought himself on the brink of the grave, and it 

 partook of the solemnity of that last period of existence. There was 

 no mention of anathema in it. On the subject of the Eucharist, it 

 expressed Zwingli's doctrine clearly, but in a less harsh and abrupt 

 manner than that of the preceding formularies. Beza, who had suc- 

 ceeded Calvin as the head of the church of Geneva, hastened to 

 flign Bullinger's Confession. Ziirich, Bern, Schaffhausen, Muhlliausen, 

 Bienne, and St. Gall gave in their assent. The Evangelical portion of 

 Appenzell and Glarus were already agreed in their tenets with the 



church of Ziirich. Neuchatel added its signature to that of its allies. 

 Basel had an old formulary of its own, which did not materially differ 

 from Bullinger's confession, and it was only in the following century 

 t!::'t it formally acknowledged the Helvetic confession of faith, as it 

 was now styled. Knox and about forty ministers of the kirk of 

 Scotland sent in their signatures. The churches of the Palatinate, 

 those of Poland and Hungary, siened also the Helvetic Confe-sion. 

 Th* reformed churches of France, through political and other reasons, 

 drew out a confession of their own, acknowledging however their 

 concord with the Swiss churches." (Vulliemin, ' Histoire de la Con- 

 fdde'ration Suisse, Continuation de Miiller, Gloutz, et Hottiuger.') An 

 abstract of the Helvetic confession of faith is given in the appendix to 

 the ' History of Switzerland ' published by the Society for the Diffu- 

 sion of Useful Knowledge. On the abstruse topic of predestination , 

 it affirms that " God, out of his wisdom, has predestined or chosen, 

 from all eternity, freely, of his own mere grace, and without regard 

 for persons, the righteous whom he intends to save through Jesus 

 Christ," but at the same time it condemns any rash judgment con- 

 cerning the salvation of any one individual or class ; and it says that 

 we must hope favourably of every one. " If we hold communion with 

 Christ, and that by means of a true faith, he be ours and wo his, we 

 then have a tolerably certain proof that our names are written in the 

 book of life." 



The appellation of Calvinists has occasioned some confusion with 

 regard to the Reformed churches. Calvin, who began his career as a 

 Reformer several years after Zwingli's death, and when the Reforma- 

 tion in Switzerland had been already effected, was, properly speaking, 

 the head and the great teacher of the church of Geneva. His doc- 

 trines, which may hardly be said to differ in any point from those of the 

 Helvetic Church, except perhaps in a stronger expression of the dogma 

 of predestination, exercised an influence over the Reformed churches 

 of France. But Calvin has had no influence over Switzerland, where 

 the Reformation was established long before his time; and it is only 

 by a sort of anachronism that the Reformed churches of Switzerland 

 have been called Calvinistical. 



