§ 23. CHURCH AND STATE. 67
dependence, though she was really the moving and inspiring power of the State, and was supported by public sentiment. In a republic the majority of the people rule, and the minority must submit. The only dissenters in Zurich Avere a small number of Romanists and Anabaptists, who were treated with the same disregard of the rights of conscience as the Protestants in Roman Catholic countries, only with a lesser degree of severity. The Reformers refused to others the right of protest which they claimed and exercised for themselves, and the civil magistracy visited the poor Anabaptists with capital punishment.
The example of Zurich was followed by the other cantons in which the Reformation triumphed. Each has its own ecclesiastical establishment, which claims spiritual jurisdiction over all the citizens of its territory. There is no national Reformed Church of Switzerland, with a centre of unity.
This state of things is the same as that in Protestant Germany, but differs from it as a republic differs from a monarchy. In both countries the bishops, under the command of the Pope, condemned Protestantism, and lost the control over their flock. The Reformers, who were mere presbyters, looked to the civil rulers for the maintenance of law and order. In Germany, after the Diet of Speier in 1526, the princes assumed the episcopal supervision, and regulated the Church in their own territories for good or evil. The people were passive, and could not even elect their own pastors. In Switzerland, we have instead a sort of democratic episcopate or republican Csesaropapacy, where the people hold the balance of power, and make and unmake their government.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Church and State, professing the same religion, had common interests, and worked in essential harmony ; but in modern times the mixed character, the religious indifferentism, the hostility
68 THE SWISS REFORMATION.
and the despotism of the State, have loosened the connection, and provoked the organization of free churches in several cantons (Geneva, Vaud, Neuchatel), on the basis of selfsupport and self-government. The State must first and last be just, and either support all the religions of its citizens alike, or none. It owes the protection of law to all, within the limits of order and peace. But the Church has the right of self-government, and ought to be free of the control of politicians.^
Among the ministers of the Reformation period, Zwingli, and, after his death, BuUinger, exercised a sort of episcopate in fact, though not in form ; and their successors in the Great Minster stood at the head of the clergy of the canton. A similar position is occupied by the Antistes of Basle and the Antistes of Schaffhausen. They correspond to the Superintendents of the Lutheran churches in Germany.
Zwingli was the first among the Reformers who organized a regular synodical Church government. He provided for a synod composed of all ministers of the city and canton, two lay delegates of every parish, four members of the small and four members of the great council. This mixed body represented alike Church and State, the clergy and the laity. It was to meet twice a year, in spring and fall, in the city hall of Zurich, Avith power to superintend the doctrine and morals of the clergy, and to legislate on the internal affairs of the Church. The first meeting was held at Easter, 1528. Zwingli presided, and at his side was Leo Judse. The second meeting took place May 19, 1528. The proceedings show that the synod exercised strict discipline over the morals of
^ The government of the Protestant cantons of Switzerland tolerates and supports now, in the pulpit and the chair, all sorts of errors and heresies far worse than those for which the Anabaptists were drowned in the sixteenth century. In 1839 the magistracy of Zurich called the infidel Dr. Strauss to the chair of dogmatic theology in the university ; but on that occasion the country people asserted their sovereignty, upset the rule of the radical party, and defeated its aim.