188 THE SWISS REFORMATION.
mentary on the narrowness and intolerance of the Reformer.^
The faithful friends of evangelical freedom and progress in Switzerland revered Zwingli as a martyr, and regarded the defeat at Cappel as a wholesome discipline or a blessing in disguise. Bullinger voiced their sentiments. " The victory of truth," he wrote after the death of his teacher and friend, " stands alone in God's power and will, and is not bound to person or time. Christ was crucified, and his enemies imagined they had conquered ; but forty years afterwards Christ's victory became manifest in the destruction of Jerusalem. The truth conquers through tribulation and trial. The strength of the Christians is shown in weakness. Therefore, beloved brethren in Germany, take no offence at our defeat,
1 In his letter to Albrecht of Prussia, April, 1532 (in De Wette, IV. 348- 355), Luther expresses a doubt about Z-\vingli's salvation (on account of his denial of the corporal presence). He scorns the idea that he was a martyr ; he regrets that the Catholic Cantons did not complete their victory by suppressing the Zwinglian heresy, and he warns the Duke of Prussia not to tolerate it in his dominion. In his furious polemic tract, Short Confession of the Holy Sacrament, written in 1545, a year before his death (Werke, Erlangen ed., vol. XXXII. 399-401, 410), Luther says that "Zwingel" (he always misspells his name) and OScolampadius "perished in their sins"; that Zwingli died "in great and many sins and blasphemy " {in grossen und vielen Sunden iind Gottes- Idsterung), having expressed a hope for the salvation of such " gottlose Heiden " a,s Socrates, Aristides, and the "greiiliche Numa" ; that he became a heathen ; and that he perished by the sword because he took up the sword. He adds that he, Martin Luther, " would rather a hundred times be torn to pieces and burned than make common cause with Stenkefeld [Stinkfeld for Schwenkfeld], Zwingel, Carlstadt, and fficolampadius ! " 0 sancta simplicitas ! How different is the conduct and judgment of Zwingli, who, at Marburg, with tears in his eyes, offered the hand of brotherhood to his great antagonist, and who said of him in the very heat of the eucharistic controversy : " Luther is so excellent a warrior of God, and searches the Scriptures with such great earnestness as no one on earth for these thousand years has done ; and no one has ever equalled him in manly, unshaken spirit with which he has attacked the pope of Rome. He was the true David whom the Lord himself appointed to slay Goliath. He hurled the stones taken from the heavenly brook so skilfully that the giant fell prostrate on the ground. Saul has slain thousands, but David tens of thousands. He was the Hercules who rushed always to the post of danger in battle. . . . Therefore we should justly thank God for having raised such an instrument for his honor ; and this we do with pleasure."
§ 48. REFLECTIONS ON THE DISASTER AT CAPPEL. 189
but persevere in the Word of God, which has always won the victory, though in its defence the holy prophets, apostles, and martyrs suffered persecution and death. Blessed are those who die in the Lord. Victory will follow in time. A thousand years before the eyes of the Lord are but as one day. He, too, is victorious who suffers and dies for the sake of truth. "^
It is vain to speculate on mere possibilities. But it is more than probable that a victory of the Protestants at that time would have been in the end more injurious to their cause than defeat. The Zlirichers would have forced the Reformation upon the Forest Cantons and all the bailiwicks, and would thereby have provoked a reaction which, with the aid of Austria and Spain and the counter-Reformation of the papacy, might have ended in the destruction of Protestantism, as it actually did in the Italian dependencies of Switzerland and the Grisons, in Italy, Spain, and Bohemia.
It was evidently the will of Providence that in Switzerland, as well as in Germany, both Churches, the Roman Catholic and the Evangelical, should co-exist, and live in mutual toleration and useful rivalry for a long time to come.
We must judge past events in the light of subsequent events and final results. " By their fruits ye shall know them."
The death of Zwingli is a heroic tragedy. He died for God and his country. He was a martyr of religious liberty and of the independence of Switzerland. He was right in his aim to secure the freedom of preaching in all the Cantons and bailiwicks, and to abolish the military pensions which made the Swiss tributary to foreign masters. But he had no right to coerce the Catholics, and to appeal to the sword. He was mistaken in the means, and he anticipated the proper time. It took nearly three centuries before these reforms could be executed.
1 Christoffel, I. 409. Comp. also the beautiful preface of Zwingli to the history of the passion, in which he shows his readiness to die for Christ, quoted by Morikofer, II. 415.