THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
After three years of preaching, Zwingli judged that the time was ripe for a bolder step. Consequently he prepared sixty-five theses, not at all like the ninety-five theses of Luther, which were on the single topic of indulgences and were intended primarily for a university: audience, while Zwingli’s theses were for a popular audience and covered all the points of the ‘ Gospel,”’ as he called it. In accordance with the Swiss plan that before radical measures were taken in a canton there was to be a public debate as‘to their expediency, presided over by the burgomaster, a meeting was held in the town hall of Zurich on Jan. 29, 1523. All the clergy were invited, and the frankest expression of opinion was
courted, As amatter of fact, there was
5. The Final no real debate, but only a dialogue be- Rupture. tween Zwingli and the vicar-general of Constance. The decision of the magis-
tracy was that the doctrines Zwingli had preached were enjoined on all priests in the canton. This was satisfactory so far, but only as an entering wedge. Zwingli kept on applying the “‘ Gospel ” to practical matters and began preparations for a second discussion, which was held Oct. 26-28, 1523, this being still less a debate between the Old and the Reform Church parties, since it was almost entirely in the hands of the latter. Of special interest is the part which the radicals among the followers of Zwingli played. They accepted his whole program, but they were for immediate application of its practical teaching, and wished Zwingli to accept some of its logical consequences—both of which courses were hostile to his cautious nature. The decisions of the magistracy after this discussion were, however, radical enough to suit any but a radical, for they
. removed the images and pictures out of the churches,
made the vernacular the language of the religious services, and, still more startlingly, stripped the mass of all its incrustations through the centuries and brought it back, as far as possible, to its first institution. A third disputation was held Jan. 19- 20, 1524, but this was a last desperate attempt of the Old Church party to stem the tide of change which Zwingli had set in motion. By the end of 1524 church life in Zurich was quite different in many of its outward manifestations from that in any other Swiss city. The convents for men and women had been abolished, and the music had been silenced in the churches, a strange proceeding for one so fond of music as Zwingli, and defensible only on his theory that the Reformed Church should have no practise which recalled the Old Church as music did. The mass alone stood, and that was so wrapped up with the life of the people that he hesitated to destroy it before the people were fully prepared to accept a substitute. At last the decree went forth that on Thursday of Holy Week, Apr. 13, 1525, in the Great Minster the Lord’s Supper would be for the first time observed according to the liturgy Zwingli had composed. On that eventful day men and women sat on opposite sides of the table which extended down the middle aisle, and were served with bread upon wooden platters and wine out of wooden beakers. The contrast to the former custom was shocking to many, yet the new way was accepted. With this radical break with
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Zwingli, Huldreich
the past the Reformation in Zurich may be said to have been completed.
No sooner had the Reformation been established than internal troubles nearly disrupted the State. First came the peasants with their undoubted grievances, although they did not give the trouble they made in Germany, both because their demands were less radical, and because the authorities, on the advice of Zwingli, were more conciliatory. But
the other disturbing element, the de- 6. Peasant tested, the dreaded, the misunderand Ana- stood and persecuted Anabaptists, baptist Dis- were the real trial. They did not origturbances. inate in Zurich, but the earliest members of the party in Zurich were members of Zwingli’s congregation. He had taught them to ask Scripture proof for doctrines and practises seeking church acceptance, and they accordingly asked him to give such proof for infant baptism. Because he could not, he was at first mclined to grant that logically the practise had no Scriptural support; but when they pressed him to declare himself plainly, they only stirred his anger by so doing. He fell back upon the assumptions of the Old Church, and for a man so radical on all other points he showed a singular reluctance to accept the consistent teaching of his Anabaptist friends. [It was only when it became manifest to him that rejection of infant baptism involved an effort to establish churches of the regenerates, and to effect the unchurching of all who could not make a public confession of an experience of grace and the abolition of secular authority in religious matters, that Zwingli felt compelled to oppose it with all his might. A. H.N.] He sought to silence them by sermon and treatise, and because they would not keep silence he became their persecutor. This attitude can be explained only by his acceptance of the propriety of suppressing what is deemed to be erroneous, even at the expense of life, on the claim that it is better that a few should die for their erroneous faith than that they should be allowed to live and propagate their errors. This doctrine was accepted by Protestants and by Roman and Greek Catholics in the sixteenth century, and the first alone have repudiated it. (For the experiences of the Swiss Anabaptists see ANABAPTISTS.)
The years of Zwingli’s life from 1524 to 1529 were extremely busy, and were passed almost entirely in Zurich. One occasion for a visit outside of it was very pressing. At Baden, a famous watering-place, only twelve miles northwest of Zurich, there was a disputation between the Old Church representatives and the Zwingli party from May 21 to June 8, 1526 (see Bapen [im Aarcau], CONFERENCE oF). It was thought to be dangerous for Zwingli to go
thither because the Old Church party
7. The meditated his death. But though not
Conference present in person, Zwingli had the at Baden. closest connection with those from
Zurich who spoke for him, and gave
them daily instruction. The debates were probably as fair as such debates can be, but things were exactly reversed from what they were in the Zurich debates, for the speakers and the audience were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. Of course each
side claimed the victory. In 1528 Zwingli was in Bern and played the most prominent part in the formal introduction, through magisterial action, of the Reformation into that city.
To this period of Zwingli’s life also belongs the debate with Luther over the Lord’s Supper, one of the great misfortunes the consequences of which are felt to-day. As Luther said at Marburg, he and Zwingli were not of the same spirit. Zwingli taught that the sacraments were signs and symbols of holy things, but in themselves had no power to cleanse, so that in the Lord’s Supper there is a bringing back to memory of the work of grace done by Jesus Christ, who lives before the believer, though there is no participation of grace through the sacrament itself. He had a clear mind
upon this point, and the mystical
8. Eucha- view in any of its phases had no attracristic Con- tions for him. Consequently, the ference withinterchange of reading material
Luther at between himself and Luther accom-
Marburg. plished nothing, and only angered
Luther. Thus baptism and the Eucharist, which were intended by Christ to be unifying practises, produced by their varied interpretation a breach between the Old Church and Protestants and between parties among the Protestants. Among the leaders of the Protestants was Philip the Magnanimous, landgrave of Hesse (see PHitip or Husss), who desired to see unity among Protestants upon the Eucharist, and to this end arranged a meeting in his castle at Marburg between Zwingli and Luther (see MarBurc, CONFERENCE OF), which had one good result. Luther discovered that he and Zwingli had much in common. Although the territory through which Zwingli had to pass on his way to Marburg was, with the exception of a few miles, friendly to Protestants, yet so panicstricken were Zwingli and all his friends at the possibility of encountering membérs of the Old Church on their own ground that the Reformer considered himself to be doing a bold thing in obeying the summons of the landgrave. He left Zutich by stealth, without permission of the government and with a false statement to his wife as to his destination, but nothing happened to him. As it was thought unwise to pit him directly against Luther, he was introduced to Melanchthon, but nevertheless the debate was between the German and the Swiss chief reformers. Both sides boasted of victory, and the usual interchange of disgraceful epithets followed the debate which the landgrave hoped would seal their union.
After his return to Zurich Zwingli prosecuted more vigorously those political schemes which were intended to result in a union of all Protestants, and also of states which were not Protestant, against the house of Hapsburg and the pope, in the interest of religious liberty. The time Zwingli gave to these negotiations must have been considerable, for he sought to unite in this ‘‘ Christian Burgher Rights,” as he called his league, bodies as widely scattered as France and the Republic of Venice. What might have come of this scheme if his life had been longer continued it is, of course, impossible to say, but in 1530 he saw the making of the Schmalkald League,
Zwingli, Huldreich