94 THE SWISS EEFORMATION.
strongest predestinariaiis were among the most earnest and active Christians. It will be difficult to find purer and holier men than St. Augustin and Calvin, the chief champions of this very system which bears their name. The personal assurance of election fortified the Reformers, the Huguenots, the Puritans, and the Covenanters against doubt and despondency in times of trial and temptation. In this personal application the Reformed doctrine of ^predestination is in advance of that of Augustin. Moreover, every one who has some perception of the metaphysical difficulties of reconciling the fact of sin with the wisdom and holiness of God, and harmonizing the demands of logic and of conscience, will judge mildly of any earnest attempt at the solution of the apparent conflict of divine sovereignty and human responsibility.
And yet we must say that the Reformers, following the lead of the great saint of Hippo, went to a one-sided extreme. Melanchthon felt this, and proposed the system of synergism, which is akin to the semi-Pelagian and Arminian theories. Q^colampadius kept Witliin the limits of Christian experience and expressed it in the sound sentence, '•'•iSalus nostra ex Deo, perditio nostra ex nobis.^^ We must always keep in mind both the divine and the human, the speculative and the practical aspects of this problem of ages ; in other words, we must combine divine sovereignty and human responsibility as complemental truths. There is a moral as well as an intellectual logic, — a logic of the heart and conscience as well as a logic of the head. The former must keep the latter in check and save it from running into supralapsarianism and at last into fatalism and pantheism, which is just as bad as Pelagianism.
3. Original sin and guilt. Here Zwingli departed from the Augustinian and Catholic system, and prepared the way for Arminian and Socinian opinions. He was far from denying the terrible curse of the fall and the fact of original
§ 29. THE THEOLOGY OF ZWINGLI. 95
sin ; but he regarded original sin as a calamity, a disease, a natural defect, which involves no personal guilt, and is not punishable until it reveals itself in actual transgression. It is, hoAvever, the fruitful germ of actual sin, as the inborn rapacity of the wolf will in due time prompt him to tear the sheep.^
4. The doctrine of the sacraments, and especially of the Lord's Supper, is the most characteristic feature of the Zwinglian, as distinct from the Lutheran, theology. Calvin's theory stands between the two, and tries to combine the Lutheran realism with the Zwinglian spiritualism. This subject has been sufficiently handled in previous chapters.^
5. Eschatology. Here again Zwingli departed further from Augustin and the mediseval theology than any other Reformer, and anticipated modern opinions. He believed (with the Anabaptists) in the salvation of infants dying in infancy, whether baptized or not. He believed also in the salvation of those heathen who loved truth and righteousness in this life, and were, so to say, unconscious Christians, or pre-Christian Christians. This is closely connected with his humanistic liberalism and enthusiasm for the ancient classics. He admired the wisdom and the virtue of the Greeks and Romans, and expected to meet in heaven, not only the saints of the Old Testament from Adam down to John the Baptist, but also such men as Socrates, Plato, Pindar, Aristides, Numa, Cato, Scipio, Seneca; yea, even such mythical characters as Hercules and Theseus. There is, he says, no good and holy man, no faithful soul, from the beginning to the end of the world, that shall not see God in his glory .^
1 He describes original sin in Latin as defectus naturalis and conditio misera, in German as a Brest or Gebrechen, i.e. disease. He compares it to the misfortune of one born in slavery. He explains his view more fully in his tract, De peccato originali ad Urhanum Rhegium, 1526 {Opera, III. 627-645), and in his Confession to Charles V.
2 § 27, p. 85 sq. ; vol. VI. 620 sqq., and Creeds of Christendom, I. 372-377.
2 He often speaks on this subject in his epistles, commentaries, the tract