Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/883

Rh ZWINGLI 833 The progress of the Reformation in Zurich attracted the attention of all Switzerland, and the Confederation became divided into two parties. The Reformers found numerous supporters in the larger towns of Basel, Bern, and Schaff- hausen, and in the country districts of Glarus, Appenzell, and the Grisons. The five Forest Cantons Lucerne, Zug, Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden remained solidly opposed to all reforms. This anti-Reformation party was also strong in the patrician oligarchies which drew papal pensions, and enriched themselves by the nefarious blood traffic de nounced by Zwingli. The Zurichers felt it necessary to form a defensive league to prevent their Reformation from being crushed by force. They were especially anxious to gain Bern, and Zwingli challenged the Roman Catholics to a public disputation in that city. No less than 350 ecclesi astics came to Bern from the various cantons to hear the pleadings, which began on 2d January 1528 and lasted nineteen days. Zwingli and his companions undertook to defend against all comers the following ten propositions : (1) That the Holy Christian Church, of which Christ is the only Head, is born of the Word of God, abides therein, and does not listen to the voice of a stranger j (2) that this church imposes no laws on the conscience of people without the sanction of the Word of God, and that the laws of the church are binding only in so far as they agree with the Word ; (3) that Christ alone is our righteousness and our salvation, and that to trust to any other merit or satisfaction is to deny Him ; (4) that it cannot be proved from the Holy Scripture that the body and blood of Christ are corporeally present in the bread and in the wine of the Lord s Supper ; (5) that the mass, in which Christ is offered to God the Father for the sins of the living and of the dead, is contrary to Scripture and a gross affront to the sacrifice and death of the Saviour ; (6) that we should not pray to dead mediators and inter cessors, but to Jesus Christ alone ; (7) that there is no trace of purgatory in Scripture ; (8) that to set up pictures and to adore them is also contrary to Scripture, and that images and pictures ought to be destroyed where there is danger of giving them adora tion ; (9) that marriage is lawful to all, to the clergy as well as to the laity ; (10) that shameful living is more disgraceful among the clergy than among the laity. These they defended to such purpose that the Bernese joined heartily in the Reformation, and the enthusiasm of the people was fired by two burning sermons preached by Zwingli from the minster pulpit to overflowing audiences. The two parties henceforward faced each other in Switzer land. The country was in those days a confederacy of republics, and yet was far from being a democracy. Most of the cantons were ruled by aristocratic oligarchies who had pensions from foreign Governments, and Zwingli s appeal had always been from an oligarchy of pope, bishops, and abbots to the congregation with the Bible in hand. He founded his religious Reformation on the congregation, and this of itself suggested that the state was nothing but the people. It so happened that those cantons which remained firmly attached to Roman Catholicism were the least powerful, and yet from historical position and the long custom of the Confederacy had the largest legal in fluence in the country. The Forest Cantons had been the earliest to free themselves. Isolated towns and districts after successful revolt had claimed the protection of these little republics, and the Forest Cantons governed by means of prefects a large number of places beyond their boundaries. This gave them votes in the diet or federal council far beyond what they were entitled to by their population and actual resources. These cantons felt that, if the Reformation and the political ideas it suggested spread, their supremacy would be overthrown and their rule confined within their own territories. Nor had they in their upland valleys seen the worst abuses of the medi aeval church. They dreaded the Reformation. They per secuted inquirers after truth, and imprisoned, beheaded, and burnt the followers of Zwingli when they caught them within their borders. Zwingli, alone among Protestant leaders, saw that the religious and the political questions could not be decided separately, but were for practical statesmanship one and the same problem. His policy was to reorganize the Swiss constitution on the principles of representative democracy, to put an end to the unnatural supremacy of the Forest Cantons by abolishing the prefects and their jurisdiction, and by giving the larger cantons the influence in the diet which was due to their resources and population, and to do this at once, and if necessary by war. His counsels were overruled. Bern was anxious to treat the religious question separately, and to negotiate for religious toleration, leaving the political future to take care of itself. The course of history has fully justified Zwingli. The views of the peace party triumphed, and a religious truce was negotiated under the name of the first peace of Cappel, with guarantees on paper that there was to be toleration in religious matters. But no real securities were given. The provisions of the treaty were never carried out in the Roman Catholic cantons, where authori ties were secretly preparing for war. Zwingli in vain pro claimed the danger and urged offensive measures. The Protestant cantons remained heedless to the danger. At length the storm burst. The Forest Cantons advanced (1531) secretly and rapidly on Zurich, with the intention of overcoming the Protestant cantons one by one. The Zurichers met their foes at Cappel, were outnumbered, and were defeated. Zwingli, who had accompanied the troops as field chaplain, and had stood among the fighting men to encourage them, had received two wounds on the thigh when a blow on the head knocked him senseless. After the retreat of the Zurichers, when the victors examined the field, Zwingli was found to be still living. He was not recognized, and was asked if he wished a priest ; when he refused, a captain standing near gave him a death- stroke on the neck. Next day his body was recognized. &quot; Then there was a wonderful running to the spot the whole morning, for every man wished to see Zwingli.&quot; He had in death the same eager, courageous expression which his hearers were accustomed to see on his face when he preached. A great boulder, roughly squared, standing a little way off the road, marks the place where Zwingli fell. It is inscribed with the words, &quot; They may kill the body but not the soul : so spoke on this spot Ulrich Zwingli, who for truth and the freedom of the Christian Church died a hero s death, Oct. 11, 1531.&quot; Zwingli s theological views are expressed succinctly in the sixty- seven theses published at Zurich in 1523, and at greater length in the First Helvetic Confession, compiled in 1536 by a number of his disciples. 1 They contain the elements of Reformed as distinguished from Lutheran doctrine. As opposed to Luther, Zwingli insisted more firmly on the supreme authority of Scripture, and broke more thoroughly and radically with the mcditeval church. Luther was content with changes in one or two fundamental doctrines ; Zwingli aimed at a reformation of government and discipline as well as of theology. Zwingli never faltered in his trust in the people, and was earnest to show that no class of men ought to be called spiritual simply because they were selected to perform certain functions. He thoroughly believed also that it was the duty of all in authority to rule in Christ s name and to obey His laws. He was led from these ideas to think that there should be no government in the church separate from the civil government which ruled the commonwealth. All rules and regulations about the public worship, doctrines, and discipline of the church were made in Zwingli s time, and with his consent, by the council of Zurich, which was the supreme civil authority in the state. This was the ground of his quarrel with the Swiss Anabaptists, for the main idea in the minds of these greatly maligned men was the modern thought of a free church in a free state. Like all the Reformers, he was strictly Augustinian in theology, but he dwelt chiefly on the positive side of predestination the election to salva tion and he insisted upon the salvation of infants and of the pious heathen. His most distinctive doctrine is perhaps his theory of the sacrament, which involved him and his followers in a long and, on Luther s part, an acrimonious dispute with the German Protest ants. His main idea was that the sacrament of the Lord s Supper 1 Schaff, Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches, p. 211. XXIV. 105