I. Life and Labors.
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Being a scholar, Zwingli applied himself to his books and laid deep and wide foundations. He also evinced his capacity as a preacher, and with flaming zeal denounced the evils of the time, the chief of these, to his patriotic mind, being the hiring out of the Swiss to any one else than the pope to fight as mercenaries, an occupation which, in numerous cases, resulted in their moral ruin. Because some of the leading persons in his congregation were carrying on this traffic, his opposition awoke their animosity and made his position so uncomfortable that he was glad to accept a call to be preacher at Einsiedeln, only a few miles from Glarus, and the chief place of pilgrimage for Switzerland, South Germany, and Alsace. There he met with great numbers of people, including many prominent men, and thus he clarified his thinking on the burning questions of the day. He had a candid mind, and his faith in traditional orthodoxy had already received several shocks. Thomas Wyttenbach (q.v.) was the first one to question in his hearing the traditional base of the Church's teaching, in 1505-06, and a little later he came upon a service book containing the liturgy as used in Mollis, near Glarus, two hundred years before, and found that it expressly enjoined that the cup was to be administered to a babe after its baptism. Again, when on a campaign in Italy as chaplain of the Glarus contingent in the papal army, he discovered that the Milan liturgy differed in many points from that used elsewhere. Meditatation on these points showed him that the Church had really not taught absolutely the same truths from the beginning, nor had observed everywhere the same practises. Like all other Humanists, he read Erasmus, and from him learned that the source of doctrine was the Bible and not the Church. When, therefore, he could read the New Testament in the original in 1516, thanks to Erasmus, he drank truth from the fountain rather than through the more or less troubled stream of tradition. Then, when he met leading men at Einsiedeln, and found that the corruption of the Church in clergy and theology was a common theme, he ventured to discuss these matters in the pulpit. He also exalted the Bible above the Church as the guide into truth, and Jesus Christ above the Virgin Mary as the intercessor with the Father, and in so doing he acted independently of Luther, for, as a matter of fact, he had not heard of him. Zwingli always pretended to be ignorant of what Luther wrote, and it was his constant boast that he had started the Reformation in Switzerland independently of Luther. It was a drawback to the general cause of the Reformation that these two Reformers did not fraternize. Because Zwingli would not accept Luther's doctrine of the Lord's Supper, Luther declared him to be of a different spirit; and Zwingli found much in Luther's teachings and proceedings that he strongly disapproved.
It is not likely that Zwingli was brought into any trouble by his doctrine at Einsiedeln; rather it was welcome and increased his reputation. So, when the position of leut-priest (preacher and pastor) in the Great Minster in Zurich fell vacant in the latter part of 1518, he was suggested for the place. Then was brought to light a fact which has ever since been a humiliation to his friends and a source of triumph to his foes. Like the clergy about him, he believed himself absolved from the obligation of chastity because bound by the vow of celibacy. Lapses from sexual purity were too common to be considered objections in a priest, but the charge against him was then made that he had seduced a girl of good family, and this was considered a valid reason for rejecting his nomination. He was written to on the subject and his reply is extant. He denied the charge of seduction, but frankly admitted the charge of habitual incontinence, and he does it in a jesting tone which shows that he had no conception that his offense was any other than a trifling one. The chapter of the Great Minster agreed to this view and elected him, and it was, therefore, as a confessedly libidinous man that he came to Zurich, but only the pure in heart can see God; the Gospel had not yet entered his heart. It so happened that in his parish was a beautiful widow, Anna Reinhard (b. 1484), a Zurich innkeeper's daughter, who had married (1504) Hans Meyer von Knonau, scion of a Zurich patrician family, who had died in 1517. Her son, Gerold, was in the Great Minster Latin school when Zwingli came to Zurich and made the acquaintance of the mother. When their intimacy passed the bounds of propriety is unknown, but certain it is that from the spring of 1522 Zwingli and Anna Reinhard were living together in what was euphemistically called a "clerical marriage." Such concubinages, while not put on a level with marriage, were entered into without stigma, as it was assumed that without extraordinary supply of divine grace it was not possible for a priest to live in purity; and since, in fact, very few did, hence it was better for the morals of the community that they should have nominal wives. They were expected to, and probably did, live faithful to these women, and the women to them. When, however, the relations between Zwingli and Anna Rein-
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Zwingli held the leut-priestship from 1519 to 1522, and till the end of his life retained the preachership in the Great Minster. His fame spread through all German Switzerland and southern Germany. His sermons as printed are long, discursive, and dull, though clear and simple in style, but, in the process of the expansion they have undergone, all their liveliness has probably been removed. Having uncommon Biblical and patristic scholarship, a frank, candid, independent, and progressive nature, and a great desire to advance the interests of his country in religious, political, and social matters, he won general approval from the start, not only as a preacher but as a man. When a preacher of indulgences named Bernhardin Samson appeared in the canton (1519), Zwingli successfully opposed him-- a course which received the approval of the hierarchy, for the fathers of Trent recognized that there were abuses connected with the proclamation of indulgences (cf. the decree concerning indulgences passed by the Council of Trent Dec. 4, 1563; given in Schaff, Creeds, ii. 205-206). When the plague broke out in Zurich in 1520, Zwingli labored so assiduously among his people that, worn out, he fell sick himself and looked into the eyes of death. He used the position won by his devotion and independence to advance reform, but very cautiously and by attacking externals first. Thus he showed that fasting in Lent had no Scriptural support, which teaching was eagerly taken up by those who wanted to have good meals all the year round; next, that tithes had only state and church laws to rest upon, but no Scripture, this teaching being heartily welcomed by those who paid taxes and groaned under them. He had his say in regard to the proper way to treat beggars, who were considered by the good people about him as aids in devotion and pathways to heaven, but whom he denounced as nuisances and would have changed into self-supporting members of the community, and he showed how this might be done. Next came simplification of the breviary and plans for a liturgy in the vernacular and a much altered service for the administration of the Lord's Supper. Proceeding step by step, with the assent of the Zurich magistracy, he yet alarmed the local hierarchy, who appealed to Constance, where their bishop lived, and the bishop sent to Zurich an in vestigation committee which sat Apr. 7-9, 1522, but availed nothing against the manifest satisfaction of the citizens with the positions Zwingli had taken. It was evident that the wave of reform had passed from Germany into Switzerland.
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 a matter of fact, there was no real debate, but only a dialogue between Zwingli and the vicar-general of Constance. The decision of the magistracy 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
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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 detested, the dreaded, the misunderstood and persecuted Anabaptists, were the real trial. They did not originate 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 inclined 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 Baden [Im Aargau], Conference of). It was thought to be dangerous for Zwingli to go thither because the Old Church party meditated his death. But though not present in person, Zwingli had the 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 view in any of its phases had no attractions for him. Consequently, the interchange of reading material between himself and Luther accomplished 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 Philip of Hesse), 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 Marburg, 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 panic-stricken were Zwingli and all his friends at the possibility of encountering members 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 Zurich 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,
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On June 30, 1530, the famous Diet of Augsburg convened. To it Zwingli sent a brief confession of faith and tried, probably unsuccessfully, to get it into the emperor's hands. It was a personal confession, but is one of the most interesting documents of the Reformation. In it he thus expresses himself respecting the Eucharist: "I believe that in the holy Eucharist-- i.e., the supper of thanksgiving-- the true body of Christ is present by the contemplation of faith; i.e., that they who thank the Lord for the kindness conferred on us in his Son acknowledge that he assumed true flesh, in it truly suffered, truly washed away our sins in his own blood; and thus everything done by Christ becomes present to them by the contemplation of faith. But that the body of Christ in essence and really-- i.e., the natural body itself-- is either present in the supper or masticated with our mouth or teeth, as the papists and some who long for the flesh-pots of Egypt assert, we not only deny, but firmly maintain is an error opposed to God's Word." Zwingli played a prominent part in Protestantism and made Zurich a prominent place. His educational work was important. He was a born teacher, and when at Glarus had pupils, some of whose letters have been preserved and show how well he had taught them. His little book which was his present to his stepson reveals the wise pedagogue, and so, as soon as his other engagements permitted, he accepted the post of rector of the Carolinum, the school of the Great Minster in Zurich (1525), and did much to improve the curriculum, besides teaching there in the religious department. But not education and instruction alone claimed his attention. He was the great man of Zurich, and was consulted on every topic by everybody from the chief magistrate to the lowliest citizen. His correspondence often compelled him to toil late into the night after the crowded days, and there came from his pen a stream of treatises, in Latin when he sought the widest public, or in German when he had his own nation more in view. These treatises were sometimes hastily written and are often of little present interest, but moat of them are still worthy of reading. They are polemical, as those in exchange with Luther's on the Eucharist; expository of his position on theology in general or upon particular points; practical, giving guidance to the preachers about him how to preach the Gospel; or patriotic, noble utterances against war and the mercenary service. These writings show the broad-mindedness of Zwingli, and give ground for the claim that if he were living to-day he would be in all respects a modern man.
But this life of strenuous endeavor in so many directions was drawing to its close, not through the weakening of its bodily powers, not because under a strain the brain had given way, but because the fratricidal strife which had been temporarily avoided broke out again. On May 15, 1531, the cantons which had accepted the Reformation assembled, and learning that the Forest Cantons, which were strongly Roman Catholic, had flatly refused to keep the treaty which they had signed through their representatives the year before, resolved to bring them to terms by preventing them from crossing their borders, as they would have to do if they would purchase wheat, salt, iron, steel, and other necessary things. It was a cruel measure, as already said, and Zurich resisted it, but was outvoted. As soon as this edict came to execution, it brought the Forest Cantons to warlike preparation, and since Zurich lay directly in their path as they descended from the mountains, they attacked it first. On Oct. 9, 1531, their troops crossed the Zurich border, which was only twelve miles from the city, and the news reached there that evening. Strangely enough, there seems to have been no apprehension that war was so near, and, consequently, there was no adequate preparation for it. It was a mob rather than a little army of the famous Swiss soldiers which rushed out of the city. Their objective was Kappel, and there they were joined the next day, Wednesday, Oct. 11, 1531, by the main army. With it was Zwingii, dressed in armor, it is true, though he was a noncombatant, but he staid in the rear of the battle, and was there because he was the chief pastor of Zurich. It was a foregone conclusion that Zurich would be overthrown. She had only 2,700 men against 8,000 and they were very badly led. Overwhelmed, it took only a short time to be almost annihilated, and the battle of Kappel was a repetition of Flodden Field (Sept. 9, 1513). Five hundred Zurichers were slain, among them representatives of every prominent family in the city. But the greatest of them was Zwingli. Wounded first by a spear, and then struck on the head by a stone, he was put out of his misery by a sword thrust. He lay unrecognized for awhile, but when it became known that the corpse was that of Zwingli, it was treated with every indignity because he was held to be the author of the regulations which had brought on the war, which
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It has been the subject of some controversy what is to be considered the determinative element of Zwingli's theological system. Is it the religious interest of the Christian in salvation, or, more precisely, his faith in his election, which constitutes the central point in his religious life, as E. Zeller supposes? And, in this case, is it the doctrine of election, not as a theoretical proposition, but as a consequence of the consciousness of election, which forms the ultimate background of his religious convictions, the foundation and the center of his doctrine? Or, on the other hand, would Zwingli lay down as the determinative standard of all other theological propositions the idea of God, conceived in a deterministic way, the idea of the absolute, all-embracing activity of God, who is the Highest Good, absolute Being, and Essence and Life of all things? In this case is the determinative element of the system a theological (i.e., a philosophical), an objective one, in short, a principle which could be "maintained even without the Scriptures," as C. Sigwart declares? Both of these main suppositions place an undue emphasis upon single elements of the case, although they are characteristic elements, and both theories are, therefore, to be decidedly rejected.
To Sigwart's conception it may be objected that the idea of God, however great the consistency with which it is employed in Zwingli's doctrinal structure, is, nevertheless, not its determinative element at all-- at least not after such a manner as to furnish the explanation of every individual element, or of the whole tenor of the system, of its radical and thoroughly practical tendency. Certainly it is not correct to estimate Zwingli's idea of God as a speculative and a priori idea, and to designate Pico della Mirandola (q.v.) as the source of the same (cf. Usteri, TSK, 1885, iv. 625 sqq.). For, however surprizing an influence Pico has exercised upon many of Zwingli's theoretical expositions, there is to be found in that writer not only no doctrine of faith, but, in the definiteness which is so characteristic of Zwingli, not even a doctrine of providence and election. Zwingli himself also explicitly testifies that he was led to the quite peculiar doctrine of election which he teaches by the Scriptures (Werke, ed. Schuler and Schulthess, iv. 113, 8 vols., Zurich, 1828-42), that it is, therefore, not the consequence of speculative premises. Besides, it is a frequently recurring proposition of Zwingli's that we are concerned in religious knowledge not with the productions of the natural, blind reason, but with facts of experience wrought by God, with immediate illumination by the Spirit of God (iii. 130, 152, 157, 72; i.208, 212, and 70, often).
Again, Zeller's development of the doctrinal system of Zwingli from the consciousness of election does not touch its real center. We are rather, if we are seeking the decisive source, to select in a more general way faith and the doctrine of faith. Faith, which is the direct operation of the Spirit of God in man, is itself the real life in God, the real unity with him, the "conclusion of all religion" (iii. 540); it embraces the entire religious relation of the man, the definite attitude wrought in him by God himself. With this, consequently, is immediately given the unconditioned certainty of salvation; it is salvation made objectively real and "conscious" (ii. 1, pp. 359, 283; i. 269, 277; iii. 230, and often). Accordingly, the conclusion which Zwingli draws can not be this: "I am elect, therefore I must be saved; and without this election, resting upon the eternal purpose of God, my consciousness of salvation would lack its indubitable certainty"; but, on the contrary: "I know that I am in possession of a God-wrought faith and of the salvation which is involved in this: consequently I must be elect." He who believes "is already certain that he is elected of God" (iv. 8); "he who is covered by the shield of faith knows that he is elected of God by the very basis and firmness of his faith" (iv. 122). It is an immediate consequence of this that the consciousness of election, which is, in any case, a derived and never an independent consciousness, is, by its very origin, not so much the chief object of faith as it is the most important (though not, of course, exclusive) contents of faith; and, consequently, it follows that the doctrine of election can not properly nerve as the fundamental doctrine in which the original form of the religious consciousness expresses itself. It is only afterward, when the reflective faculty makes the relation an object of consideration (i.e., in the system of doctrine), that election comes to stand above and before faith; or, as Zeller himself says, the doctrine of providence and election is the product of the unconditioned certainty of faith. "It is evident that those who believe know that they have been elected; for those who believe have been elected. Election, therefore, precedes faith" (iv. 123-127, iii. 426). Faith is "the fruit and present pledge of election, so that he who has faith already knows that he has been elected, which aforetime he did not know when he had not yet come to the fulness of faith, even though he was no less elect in the sight
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of God before faith was given him as after" (iii. 575).
When Zwingli began the Reformation, his religious consciousness had essentially come to definite results in every direction. He rejected the many forms of intervention between the soul and God with which Roman Catholicism abounds, these broken cisterns in which he found no water, this suspension of the immediate relation of the soul to God, arising from the obacuratibn of the Christian consciousness of God, and pressed his way on through all obstacles to God, to God himself. In God he is at peace and rest, God is the Sabbath of his soul, God his One and his All, God the incomparable and highest Good, the only exclusive originator and beatower of salvation; his hold on God it is impossible for him to let go, to God, whose in-
strument he is, he surrenders himself4. Direct without condition. God is, therefore, Relation of most truly the object of faith, for to the Human believe is nothing else than to trust in
Soul to God alone, to have God; and all the God. rest that belongs to the Christian faith
-even Christ and redemption through him, even the word of God and the means of grace in the Christian Church not excepted-stands in an auxiliary capacity to the immediate and exclusive relation in which the Christian stands to God. The entire safety of the soul is in intimately trusting in God, and this is the faith that everything has its existence only through God. Salvation can be founded upon God alone, upon the grace of God, the Mediator and Surety of which is Christ, upon the operations of divine grace in man and for man, that is, upon nothing which is human, nothing external, nothing finite. All trust whose center is not God, rests upon unfaith and is idolatry, while the greater the faith in God who controls all things, the greater is God in man, the eternal unchangeable power of all good. So Zwingli expresses himself from the beginning in innumerable passages, whether he is carrying on a polemic against the features of Roman Catholicism by which it made religion an external thing, or is quietly developing the essence of piety. The Christian, reconciled and united with God through Christ, laid hold of and directed by his Spirit, is perfectly conscious of his personal salvation; and, if we ask how he has arrived at this peace in God, which is one almost mystical, and yet one full of impelling power, and if we inquire how he has reached this fundamental trait of his religious life, which also controls his theology, there is no other answer than this: it was the study of the holy Scriptures, especially of the epistles of Paul and of the Gospel of John, or, rather, it was the drawing of God through his Spirit, which, by means of the study of the Scriptures, led him to it.
Zwingli had accepted, in part before and in part in connection with the study of the Scriptures, a number of other elements of culture which belonged both to classic heathenism and to the later science developed in the Christian church. He had busied himself to a considerable degree with the Stoic Seneca, with the deterministic and anti-Pelagian Augustine, and especially with the modern Platonist, Pico. Under their influence, as well as under that
of the widely accepted views which accompanied humanism, he had formed a general theory of the
universe which it is impossible to deg. Philo- fine in detail. The conceptions and
sophical the general views and points of depar-Elements tore which he had gained from these of Zwingli's writers may have already exercised
Theology. more or less influence upon his concep-tion of the Scriptures and upon the tendency of his religious life. When, then, practical needs gradually led to the demand that he should summarize Christian doctrine in a connected system, as an organic whole, he employed for the dogmatic development and proof of the truths of the Scriptures the scientific principles which had become familiar to him from other sources, combining their various elements after a fashion of his own, as is, of course, always the case in the formation and development of a system. His philosophical conceptions and speculative ideas, so far as they appeared to be applicable, gave the form in which he set forth the substance of his religious consciousness, which had been developed, so far as its specific contents were concerned, under the influence of the Scriptures. If one should object that, according to this, the dogmatic formulation would come to sustain a rather mechanical relation to its religious contents, we should maintain in reply that everywhere in Zwingli the impelling religious interest and the theological exposition are carefully separated, as will be seen as soon as one compares his reformatory and practical writings with his system. Certainly, among the methods of viewing such subjects and the definitions which were familiar to him, he has incorporated in his system precisely those which corresponded most to his ruling convictions. And although he has produced no detailed development of the whole system, and has written no "Institutes of the Christian Religion," he has, nevertheless, set forth the body of Christian doctrine from premises of his own with a logical sequence which is worthy of all recognition. Though he is sometimes indefinite and often incomplete, he has succeeded in sketching the firm outlines of the great principles of theology within which the diverging tendencies of the Reformed Church and its doctrinal development have moved in subsequent times. At the same time, it is not to be doubted that he would have given a very different aspect to the dogmatic formulation of his doctrinal conceptions if he had had, for instance, the more advanced scientific ideas of the present at his disposal. While the religious substance of his doctrine would have essentially varied from that to be found in his present writings in scarcely a single important point, we should have certainly found a more carefully formulated concept of God, an anthropology quite different from his present abstract and dualistic one, a deeper doctrine of sin, a less mechanical Christology and one determined by the doctrine of God and of the essence of man, and, in general, a more satisfactory adjustment of the antitheses between the absolute and the finite causality, between determinism and freedom, between spirit and body.
Zwingli takes his theological standpoint essentially in the concrete reality of Christian experience
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it is the expression of such relations as 6. Rigid appear to be decisive for the life of Practicality faith that men actually experience. sad Exclu- Everything, on the contrary, which
sion of does not touch the immediate present, Speculation. or touches it only remotely, which does
not have to do with the actual relation of God to man and of man to him, which belongs in the region of the merely transcendent, and, consequently, can not be the object of experience, he places, even in doctrine, far in the background. The being of God as such, God in his premundane self-existent being, does not disturb him; the trinitarian definitions of the church doctrine, with the ontological hypostatization of the Father, Son, and Spirit, he cites only in a formal way, and certainly betrays, while he does this, an undeniable tendency to Unitarianism (iii. 179, ii. i, p. 208); the doctrine of creation, the angels, the miracles, the " state of integrity," the question as to the possibility of the Fall, and that as to the method in which the sinful tendency of our nature is transmitted, the intercession and the royal office of Christ, the beginning of the new life in conversion, the distinguishable elements of the life in the world to come, and the condition after- the final judgment do not fix his attention. On the contrary, the decisive weight in the doctrine of God falls upon the active presence of God in his entire creation, upon the self-communication of God to man and mediately, through man, to the world, and, consequently, upon providence as the "present operation of God," the absolute activity of God as the unity of his power, wisdom, and goodness; while in the doctrine of the provision of salvation and the realization of salvation this stress falls upon the impartation and the indwelling of the Spirit of God and the union with God produced thereby, and upon salvation conferred by faith as a present possession. Even the doctrine of the eternal decree of election (in antithesis to which nothing but the stubborn fact drives him to the affirmation of reprobation) is employed in the development of the concrete religious consciousness; it aims at the establishment of faith which is, to be sure, the product of the divine causality, although this faith does not in this world correspond to its ideal in any respect.
If we add to this that religion has for its central point not so much the atonement as liberation from evil, viz., redemption; that the significance of Christ is found less in his merit than in his example, to which we are bound; that the specific principle of redemption is found, not so much in Christ as in the freely ruling and guiding Holy Spirit; that faith appears to be, not so much the organ of receptivity, as itself a spontaneity, a God-filled motive force, and an "effectual power and unwearing activity" which exhibit their result in the fulfilment of the will of God; that the struggle for moral perfection, for a righteousness which is not merely imputed but real, and the active battle which this demands beXIL--.S
tween the flesh and spirit, controls the religious life, even in the development of doctrine, more, and disproportionately more, than the need 7. Centered of the forgiveness of sins and justificaia Christian tics (which are already always assured Conscious- in God); that, aide by aide with the seas and gospel, the law also has its place as Experience revelation for the impartation of the reof Sancti- deeming grace of God to man; that fication. the deepest motive for repentance is recognized as consisting in the knowledge of the grace of God which the Gospel brings; and that, finally, the ethical standard of Christ is applied alike both to the individual person and to all the organizations which unite to form human society, we may venture to ask whether we may not apply to Zwingli, when we confine ourselves to the essential substance of his doctrine, what has elsewhere been maintained as universally true of the Reformed theology-that it is, in general, that presentation of evangelical truth which describes it from the standpoint of the Christian consciousness; and upon the high level and under the definite forms of the experience of sanctification (M. Sehneckenburger, Yergleichende Darstellung den lutherischen and reformiertera Lehrbegrf.,$s, ed. E. Giider, p. xxxvi. sqq., Stuttgart, 1855).
Bibliography: The definitive edition of Zwingli'a works has been appearing since 1904 under this title: Hxldreick Zwanglia a6mtLiche W erke enter Mituirkung den Zw=apliVereina in Zurich. Volume i. goes down to the First Zurich Disputation, 1623, and was published in Berlin by C. A. Schwetechke uud Sohn. Volume ii. begins with Zwingli's exposition and defense of the forty-nine articles he had drawn up for the first Zurich disputation, which was originally published duly 14, 1623, and goes down to Zwingli's "Advice respecting the Mass and the use of Pictures in the Churches," and was published in 1908 is Leipsic by Verlag von M. Heinsius Nachfolger. The editors of both volumes were Emil Egli and Georg Finsler. Egli died Dec. 31, 1908. Walther Kohler, his suocesaor in Zurich University, was called is to take his place upon the edition. It was decided to begin the publication of the Zwingli correspondence as volume vii., so it appeared with this title-page: Huldreieh Z uringlis adtmh lithe Werke enter Mitudrkung den Zmingli-Vereins in Zurich herauagegeben con Dr. Emit Eytif, Professor an der Uniseraitttt in Zurich, D. Dr. Georg FinaTer, Religionslabrar am Gymnasium in Basal, and D. Dr. Walther Kohler, Professor an der Unioersitat in Zurich, Band vii., Leipsic, Veriag von M. Heinsius Nachfolger, 1911. Volume iii. was begun in 1911, and so was volume viii., the two are to run in parts alternately. But as it will be several years before this edition is finished the students of Zwingli will frequently have to fall back upon the old edition of Schuler sad Schulthese (8 vols., with small supplement, Zurich, bey Friedrich 3chulthess, 1828-81). In thin edition the Latin works are .separated from the German and the arrangement is frequently inconvenient, whereas in the definitive edition there is no such separation and the contents are in chronological order. Great attention has been paid in the new edition to editorial details in the way of special historical and bibliographical introductions, minute study of the text, especially the German text which is furnished with a glossary. Many new letters appear is the correspondence as the result of the labors of Egli, who ransacked every place likely to yield them. Both the Latin and the German treatises are annotated in a manner very superior to that in the Schuler sad 3chultheae edition.
Georg Finder, Zroingli-Bibliographic. V erzeickniaa der gedruektan Schriften con und über Ulrich ZuKapli, Zurich, Orell Fuesli, 1897, gives an exhaustive list of Zwingli literature down to date, continued in Zuringliana, 1902, No. 1-in Zminglfana attention is paid to this literature. The biographies based on the sources and the resultants
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For the study of Zwingli's theology at first hand there is nothing approaching M. Huldreich Zwingli's atimmh lithe Schriften im Auazuge, 2 vols., Zurich, 1819. It in the work of Solomon Voegelin, and presents Zwingli's teachings on all subjects systematically arranged under appropriate heads, by quoting hire exact language. The only edition accessible to Voegelin was that of 1681.
When the definitive edition is finished it would be-worth while to refer these quotations to it. The only thorough study of Zwingli's theology is by August Baur, Zwinglia Theologie. Ihr Werden und ihr System, 2 vols., Halle, 1886-89 (gives far more than its title would indicate).
For the setting of the life of Zwingli see the contemporacy history by Heinrich Bullinger, who was Zwingli'a successor, Rejormationsgeachaclate, 3 vols., Frauenfeld, 1838-40; Egli's Actensammlung zur Geschichte der Zarcher Reformation in den Jahren 1519-35, Zurich, 1879; and Johann Strickler's Actensammdung zur Schmeizerischen Reformat%onageschichte in den Johren 1581-32, im Anschfusa an die gleichzeitigen eidgenosaischen Abschiede, 6 vols., Zurich, 1878-84 (give official records and cover much ground).
Emil Egli left in MS. an unfinished Schmefzerische Reformations -Geschichte, upon which he had not worked since 1902, and the first volume from 1619-25 was edited end carried through the press by Georg Finger, Zurich, 1910. For all questions bearing on Zwingli and his times nee Zroingliana. Mi#heitungen zur Geschichte Zxoingiis und der Reformation. Herauagegeben von der Vereinigung für das Zuinglimuaeum in Zurich, Zurich, 1897 sqq., published semiannually. Many of- the German treatises were transferred into modern literary German by R. Christoffel. Jackson in his Zwingli, and in his Selections from Zwingli (Philadelphia, 1901), edited several German and Latin translations, and has announced for 1912 the first volume of a translation of the Latin works and of the correspondence of ZwIngli, together with selections from his German works.
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