Zwingli Sentence Examples

He sought to establish a via media between the doctrines of Luther and Zwingli, and vainly hoped to obtain for it Luther's acceptance.

In theology he followed Zwingli, and at the sacramentarian conferences of Heidelberg (1560) and Maulbronn (1564) he advocated by voice and pen the Zwinglian doctrine of the Lord's Supper, replying (1565) to the counter arguments of the Lutheran Johann Marbach, of Strassburg.

After holding their own view for some years the four cities accepted the Confession of Augsburg, and were merged in the general body of Lutherans; but Zwingli's position was incorporated in the Helvetic Confession.

About this time he read Bucer's commentaries on the Gospels and the Psalms and also Zwingli's De vera et falsa religione; and his Biblical studies began to affect his views.

Luther, for instance, would not tolerate Zwingli's view on the Lord's Supper, while Zwingli was willing to fraternize with him notwithstanding this difference."

At the colloquy of Marburg "Zwingli offered his hand to Luther with the entreaty that they be at least Christian brethren, but Luther refused it and declared that the Swiss were of another spirit.

He expressed surprise that a man of such views as Zwingli should wish brotherly relations with the Wittenberg reformers" (Walker, The Reformation, p. 174).

Among the Reformers were, of course, Martin Luther and most of his German collaborators; the Swiss Zwingli, Bullinger, Farel and Calvin; the English Latimer, John Bradford, John Jewel; the Scot John Knox.

These cities were inclined to follow Zwingli in his sacramental teaching which was more fully expressed in the Confession of Basel (1534) and the First Helvetic Confession (1536).

But it was obvious that a permanent coalition could not be expected unless some definite understanding on the debated point could be attained; and on the very same day the landgrave despatched to Zwingli an invitation to a colloquy, and received his prompt acquiescence.

With Zwingli, who had arrived on the 27th of September, he had several interviews of considerable political importance before the Wittenberg divines made their appearance.

The personal contact between Luther and Zwingli led to no mental rapprochement between the two; but in the following year the Articles of Marburg did good service as one of the preliminaries to the Augsburg Confession, and remain a valuable document for the fundamental principles common to the Lutheran and Reformed Churches.

Even before his acquaintance with Zwingli in 1521 he had begun to preach the Reformation, his sympathetic character and his eloquence making him a great force.

He left no writings except a few letters which are preserved in Zwingli's works.

The religious ideas in South Germany were affected by the development of a reform party in Switzerland, under the influence of Zwingli, who claimed that at Einsiedeln, near the lake of Zurich, he had begun to preach the gospel of Christ in the year 1516 " before any one in my locality tion in had so much as heard the name of Luther."

Philip of Hesse was attracted by Zwingli's energy, and was eager that the northern reformers should be brought into closer relations with the south.

But the league arranged by Zwingli was directed against the house of Habsburg, and Luther did not deem it right to oppose a prince by force of arms.

Moreover, he did not believe that Zwingli, who con ceived the eucharist to be merely symbolical in its character, " held the whole truth of God."

Never, theless, Philip of Hesse finally arranged a religious conference in the castle of Marburg (1529) where Zwingli and Luther met.

They made it clear that they still held a great part of the beliefs of the medieval Church, especially as represented in Augustine's writings, and repudiated the radical notions of the Anabaptists and of Zwingli.

Meanwhile, they were to make no further innovations, they were not to molest the conservatives, and were to aid the emperor in suppressing the doctrines of Zwingli and of the Anabaptists.

In November the Protestants formed the Schmalkaldic League, which, after the death of Zwingli, in 1531, was joined by a number of the South German towns.

He heard Zwingli at Zurich in 1527, and next year accompanied him to the disputation at Berne.

After the battle of Cappel (11th of October 1S31), in which Zwingli fell, he left Bremgarten.

On the 9th of December 1531 he was chosen to succeed Zwingli as chief pastor of Zurich.

His uncle, Bartholomew Zwingli, afterwards dekan or superintendent of Wesen, had been elected parish priest of Wildhaus.

The circumstances and surroundings of Zwingli's early life were thus dissimilar from those of his contemporary, Martin Luther.

Zwingli, moreover, never knew anything of those spiritual experiences which drove Luther into a cloister and goaded him to a feverish "searching of the Scriptures" in the hope of finding spiritual peace.

Zwingli was a humanist, a type abhorred of Luther; and he was far more ready for the polite Erasmian society of Basel than for a monastery.

Luther never quite shook off scholasticism, whereas Zwingli had early learnt from Dr Thomas Wyttenbach that the time was at hand when scholastic theology must give place to the purer and more rational theology of the early Fathers and to a fearless study of the New Testament.

At the age of twenty-two Zwingli was ordained by the bishop of Constance (1506), preached his first sermon at Rapperswyl, and said his first mass among his own people at Wildhaus.

In the same year he was elected parish priest of Glarus, in spite of the pope's nomination of Heinrich Goldli, an influential pluralist of Zurich, whom Zwingli found it necessary to buy off at an expense of more than a hundred gulden.

Zwingli indeed seemed still to be devoted to the pope, whom he styled "beatissimus Christi vicarius," and he publicly proclaimed the mercenary aid given by the Swiss to the papal cause to be its dutiful support of the Holy See.

The ten years which Zwingli spent at Glarus laid the foundations of his work as a reformer.

Especially did he oppose alliances with France; but the French party in Glarus was strong, and it retaliated so fiercely that in 1516 Zwingli was glad to accept the post of people's priest at Einsiedeln.

Lindsay (History of the Reformation), clearer insight than the Lutherans, and Zwingli rather than Luther was in this matter Calvin's guide, and the guide of the reformed churches of Switzerland, France, England and the Netherlands.

All these set forth in their symbolical books the supreme place of Scripture, accepting the position which Zwingli laid down in 1536 in The First Helvetic Confession, namely, that "Canonic Scripture, the Word of God, given by the Holy Spirit and set forth to the world by the Prophets and Apostles, the most perfect and ancient of all philosophies, alone contains perfectly all piety and the whole rule of life."

Zwingli began to preach "the Gospel" in 1516, but a contemporary says that he did it so cunningly (listiglich) that none could suspect his drift.

Zwingli looked rather to the City Fathers than to the pope, and as long as he had them with him he moved confidently and laboured for reforms which were as much political and moral in character as religious.

Zwingli denounced the publication of plenary indulgence to all visitors to the shrine, and his sermons in the Swiss vernacular drew great crowds and attracted the attention of Rome.

Zwingli prevailed on the council to forbid his entrance into Zurich; and even then the pope argued that, so long as the preacher was still receiving a papal pension, he could not be a formidable adversary, and he gave him a further sop in the form of an acolyte chaplaincy.

Zwingli had never meant to remain at Einsiedeln long, and he now threw himself into a competition for the place of people's priest at the Great Minster of Zurich, and obtained it (1518) after some opposition.

Zwingli was heard in their defence and the accusation was abandoned.

Zwingli had joined in an address to the bishop of Constance calling on him no longer to endure the scandal of harlotry, but to allow the priests to marry wives, or, at least, to wink at their marriages.

In 1522 Zwingli produced his first considerable writing, the Architeles, " the beginning and the end," in which he sought by a single blow to win his spiritual freedom from the control of the bishops, and in a sermon of that year he contended that only the Holy Spirit is requisite to make the Word intelligible, and that there is no need of Church, council, or pope in the matter.

They were especially anxious to gain Bern, and Zwingli challenged the Romanists to a public disputation in that city.

On the 2nd of April 1524 the marriage of Zwingli with Anna Reinhard was publicly celebrated in the cathedral, though for some two years already he had had her to wife.

In the August of that year Zwingli printed a pamphlet in which he set forth his views of the Lord's Supper.

They proved the occasion of a conflict with Luther which was never settled, but in the meantime more attention was attracted by Zwingli's denunciation of the worship of images and of the Roman doctrine of the mass.

It was at this moment that the controversy between Luther and Zwingli took on a deeper significance.

In this Commentary there appear the mature views of Zwingli on the subject of the Elements of the Lord's Supper.

But the close of Zwingli's life was brought about by trouble nearer home.

In February 1531 Zwingli himself urged the Evangelical Swiss to attack the Five Cantons, and on the oth of October there was fought at Kappel a battle, disastrous to the Protestant cause and fatal to its leader.

Zwingli, who as chaplain was carrying the banner, was struck to the ground, and was later despatched in cold blood.

A great boulder, roughly squared, standing a little way off the road, marks the place where Zwingli fell.

Zwingli's theological views are expressed succinctly in the sixtyseven theses published at Zurich in 1523, and at greater length in the First Helvetic Confession, compiled in 1536 by a number of his disciples.'

As opposed to Luther, Zwingli insisted more firmly on the supreme authority of Scripture, and broke more thoroughly and radically with the medieval Church.

Luther was content with changes in one or two fundamental doctrines; Zwingli aimed at a reformation of government and discipline as well as of theology.

All rules and regulations about the public worship, doctrines and discipline of the Church were made in Zwingli's time, and with his consent, by the council of Zurich, which was the supreme civil authority in the state.

The leading Reformers - Luther, Zwingli, Melancthon - frequently expressed themselves against the prevailing view of the manifold sense of Scripture, and in particular questioned the legitimacy of allegorical interpretation - except for purposes of popular and practical exposition.

The coeval origin of consonants and vowels had indeed been questioned or denied by the earliest reformers (Luther, Zwingli, Calvin), but later, in the period of Protestant scholasticism and under the influence of one school of Jewish Rabbis, Protestant scholars in particular, and especially those .of the Swiss school, notably the Buxtorfs, had committed themselves to the view that the vowels formed an integral and original part of the text of the Old Testament; and this they maintained with all the more fervency.

He became Zwingli's best helper, and after more than a year of earnest preaching and four public disputations in which the popular verdict had been given in favour of Oecolampadius and his friends, the authorities of Basel began to see the necessity of some reformation.

In January 1528 Oecolampadius and Zwingli took part in the disputation at Berne which led to the adoption of the new faith in that canton, and in the following year to the discontinuance of the mass at Basel.

Oecolampadius was not a great theologian, like Luther, Zwingli or Calvin, and yet he was a trusted theological leader.

With Zwingli he represented the Swiss views at the unfortunate conference at Marburg.

He did not minutely analyse the doctrine of predestination as Luther, Calvin and Zwingli did, contenting himself with the summary "Our Salvation is of God, our perdition of ourselves."

The view of Zwingli and Calvin in the 16th century was not by any means acceptable to other reformers.

This change was due to the influence of Zwingli whose colleague at Zurich Jud became after serving for four years (1518-1522) as pastor of Einsiedeln.

The Romanists saw the significance of this movement and, fortunately for them, were able to profit by the dissensions which were breaking out in the ranks of their opponents, especially the doctrinal differences between the followers of Luther and those of Zwingli.

The league was soon joined by other strong cities, among them Strassburg, Ulm, Constance, Lhbeck and Goslar; but it was not until after the defeat and death of Zwingli atKappel in October 1531 that it was further strengthened by the adhesion of those towns which had hitherto looked for leadership to the Swiss reformer.

In 1516 he was called, as schoolmaster, to Zurich, where (1518) he attached himself to the reforming party of Zwingli.

On the death of Zwingli (1531) he migrated to Basel, and there held the office of town's preacher, and (till 1541) the chair of New Testament exegesis.

At the Marburg conference (1529) between the German and Swiss reformers, Luther was pitted against Oecolampadius and Melanchthon against Zwingli in the discussion regarding the real presence in the sacrament.

They have been reckoned an extreme left wing of the Reformation, because for a time they followed Luther and Zwingli.

At length, when the position was becoming quite untenable, he received through Zwingli a call to Zurich as professor of Greek and Hebrew, and formally throwing off his monk's habit, entered on a new life.

As a theologian his natural affinities were with Zwingli, with whom he shared the advantage of having grown up to the views of the Reformation, by the natural progress of his studies and religious life.

Luther had a high opinion of her intelligence; she took rank among those consulted on all important occasions; in one letter to her, seldom quoted, he gives the fairest statement he ever made about the views of Zwingli on the Sacrament of the Supper.

The Saxons and the Swiss, Luther and Zwingli, were in fierce controversy about the true doctrine of the sacrament of the Supper.

Luther was a patriotic German who was for ever bewailing the disintegration of the Fatherland; Zwingli was full of plans for confederations of Swiss cantons with South German cities, which could not fail to weaken the empire.

Luther had but little trust in the "common man"; Zwingli was a thorough democrat.

Above all Luther had good grounds for believing that at the conference at Memmingen friends of Zwingli had helped to organize a Peasants' War and to link the social revolution to the religious awakening.

All these suspicions were in Luther's mind when he consented very half-heartedly to meet Zwingli at a conference to be held in Philip of Hesse's castle at Marburg.

Zwingli attacked the weakest part of Luther's theory - the ubiquity of the body of Christ; and Luther attacked Zwingli's exegesis of the words of the institution.

Three separate confessions were presented to the emperor - one from Zwingli, one by the theologians of the four cities of Strassbourg, Constance, Lindau and Memmingen (Confessio Tetrapolitana), and the Augsburg Confession, the future symbol of the Lutheran church.

In his later years Luther became more tolerant on the sacramental question which divided him from the South German cities, although he never departed from his strong opposition to the supposed views of Zwingli himself.

Their refusal, however, to baptize infants, and the formation of a separate church as the outcome of this refusal, brought upon them the condemnation of Zwingli, and a number of them were banished.

Reference has already been made to the reason why a common Anabaptist confession was never made public. Probably, however, the earliest confession of faith of any Baptist community is that given by Zwingli in the second part of his Elenchus contra Catabaptistas, published in 1527.

Zwingli professes to give it entire, translating it, as he says, ad verbum into Latin.

Zwingli, who details these articles, as he says, that the world may see that they are "fanatical, stolid, audacious, impious," can scarcely be acquitted of unfairness in joining together two of them, - the fourth and fifth, - thus making the article treat "of the avoiding of abominable pastors in the church" (Super devitatione abominabilium pastorum in Ecclesia), though there is nothing about pastors in the fourth article, and nothing about abominations in the fifth, and though in a marginal note he himself explains that the first two copies that were sent him read as he does, but the other copies make two articles, as in fact they evidently are.

Before the formation of the league of Schmalkalden Philip was very intimate with Zwingli, and up to the time of the reformer's death, in 1531, he hoped that material aid would be forthcoming from his followers.

But he chanced upon some of Zwingli's works and Bullinger's commentaries on St Paul's epistles; and after some molestation in England and some correspondence with Bullinger on the lawfulness of complying against his conscience with the established religion, he determined to secure what property he could and take refuge on the continent.

There he married Anne de Tserclaes, and later on he proceeded by way of Basle to Zurich, where his Zwinglian convictions were confirmed by constant intercourse with Zwingli's successor, Bullinger.

No other mention has been found in any of the numerous Swiss or Austrian chronicles till we come to the book De Helvetiae origine, written in 1538 by Rudolph Gwalther (Zwingli's son-in-law), when the hero is still nameless, being compared to Decius or Codrus, but is said to have been killed by his brave act.

He did not, however, identify himself either with Zwinglianism or Lutheranism; he disputed with Zwingli at Zurich in 1522, and then made his way to Eisenach and Wittenberg, where he married in 1523.

Yet, in contrast with the doctrine usually ascribed to Ulrich Zwingli, Calvin teaches that grace does come through sacraments; but then, nothing comes beyond the fruits of faith; from which grace all salvation springs 1 Roman Catholic scholars naturally hold that Paul was misconstrued, but they cannot deny that Protestant theology was directly a version and interpretation of Paulinism.

Zwingli and Calvin, developing a hint of Hus, introduce a distinction between the visible and the invisible Church which Melanchthon repudiates but later Lutheranism adopts.

The work of Zwingli as a Reformer, important and thorough though it was, did not concern itself mainly with church polity.

Zwingli never faltered in his trust in the people, and was earnest to show that no class of men ought to be called spiritual simply because they were selected to perform certain functions.

Thus Stanislaus Hosius (1504-1579), a Polish cardinal and bishop of Warmie, wrote (Opera, Venice, 1 573, p. 202) " They are far readier than followers of Luther and Zwingli to meet death, and bear the harshest tortures for their faith.

In 1529 the famous conference between Luther and Zwingli on the subject of Transubstantiation took place there in the Rittersaal of the Schloss (see Marburg, Colloquy Of).

Ecclesiastical affairs were, as a matter of course, wholly under the management of the cantonal and municipal authorities, and Zwingli was content that it should be so.

Zwingli and Calvin on the other hand prefer the positive view of law as instituted by God far back in history in the days of the Old Covenant; but,, when exegesis or controversy puts pressure upon them, they fall into line and reiterate the appeal to a Natural Law.

They taught the Apostles' Creed, rejected Purgatory, the worship of saints and the authority of the Catholic Church, practised infant baptism and confirmation, held a view on the Sacrament similar to that of Zwingli, and, differing somewhat from Luther in their doctrine of justification by faith, declared that true faith was "to know God, to love Him, to do His commandments, and to submit to His will."