Background
Huldreich Zwingli was born on January 1, 1484, in the village of Wildhaus, one of ten children.
(This historic book may have numerous typos and missing te...)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... from themselves or from something else. If from themselves, they either took beginning from themselves or have existed by themselves from eternity. If they took beginning from themselves, they existed before they did exist, for they brought themselves into existence. Nothing cannot beget anything. If they have existed from eternity, they are infinite, for only the infinite is eternal, infinite and eternal are convertible terms, that is, are equal or rather actually identical. But since the stars are not infinite (for what an army of them that little organ, the eye, can take in at a glance!), it follows that they come from some one else and that some one else, the mover and author of all things, is their God and father. For though we listen to the philosophers discussing about their heavens, about spheres and circles and their powers, yet we must at last come to one only and original mover, as our starting point. This is the Deity. Secondly, I answer the argument that appeals to the simple: that the stars have bodies quite the opposite of the earth's, to wit, that they are rapid in motion, while it is sluggish and dull, that they are very bright while it is dark and black, no more proves that their original generation is of themselves than if one should maintain that plants are of original self-generation, because they increase and grow, bloom, bear fruit, wither and die, while the earth does none of these, basing this argument on the ground of their superiority of endowment over the earth in power and action. For they spring from the earth and are nourished and supported by her, as nearest cause. So untrue is it that greater perfection of activity can remove the fact of creation, though the more perfect a thing is, the more it proclaims and...
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(Next to Luther himself, Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) was pr...)
Next to Luther himself, Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) was probably the most important and certainly the most influential of the early Protestant reformers. His Commentary on True and False Religion, addressed to King Francis I of France and published by the printer Froschauer in Zurich in 1525, contrasted what Zwingli regarded as the true religion of the Protestants, grounded in Scripture, with the false religion of tradition and reason advocated by the opponents of the Reformation. In twenty-nine chapters Zwingli discussed all of the principal topics of Christian theology, from the meaning of the word "religion" itself to the role and place of images in Christian worship. All the disputed issues of the early Reformation-the doctrine of Church and ministry, baptism, penance, eucharist, the nature of civil authority-are explained lucidly and concisely. The Commentary makes clear not only the grounds for Zwingli's break with the medieval Catholic tradition in which he had been raised but also the nature of his disagreements with Erasmus, Luther, and the Swiss Anabaptists. The result is the most significant dogmatic work which Zwingli ever wrote and the most important systematic statement of Reformed theology before Calvin's Institutes.
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Huldreich Zwingli was born on January 1, 1484, in the village of Wildhaus, one of ten children.
Zwingli's education was markedly humanistic. In 1494 he was sent to school at Basel and in 1498 to Bern, where a famous classicist, Heinrich Wölflin, fired a love in him for ancient writers, including the pagans, that he never lost.
In 1500 Zwingli entered the University of Vienna to study philosophy, and there too the ideals of humanism were nurtured and deepened in him, for at that time the university boasted the presence of Conradus Celtes, one of the leading scholars of the humanistic tradition.
In 1506 he received his master's degree.
In 1506 he was ordained a priest by the bishop of Constance.
After celebrating his first Mass at Wildhaus, he was elected parish priestof Glarus a few miles away. He spent ten years in Glarus, a decade that in several important respects formed the most decisive period of his life. He developed his character as a reformer, his knowledge and love of Greek, his admiration for the great humanist Erasmus, and his bitterness at the corruption in the Church. Zwingli became so enamored of Homer, Pindar, Democritus, and Julius Caesar that he refused to believe that they and other great pagans were unredeemed because they had not known Christ.
By 1516, when Zwingli moved to Einsiedeln in the canton of Schwyz, he was already arriving at doctrinal opinions divergent from those of Rome.
Zwingli's preaching was so impressive that he was asked to become the vicar, or people's priest, of the Grossmünster in Zurich. This city bristled with intellectual activity, and on December 10, 1518, he eagerly accepted the offer. At Zurich, under his leadership, the Swiss Reformation began. He preached against the excessive veneration of saints, the celibacy of the priesthood, and fasting. When his parishioners were accused of eating meat during Lent, he defended them before the city council and wrote a forceful tract on the subject. His stand against the celibacy of the clergy brought down the wrath of the bishop of Constance upon him. In 1523 Zwingli admirably defended his position on this topic with 67 theses presented in a public disputation. The city council not only found itself in accord with him but also voted to sever the canton from the bishop's jurisdiction. Thus Zurich adopted the Reformation. Zwingli's disagreement with Luther was fundamental, and after the two reformers met at Marburg in 1529 and had a profitless discussion, it became clear that no unification of their movements could result. Zwingli was also unsuccessful in winning over all of Switzerland to his cause. Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, and Zug-the conservative forest cantons-remained faithful to Roman Catholicism and formed a league to fight Protestant movements. Tensions grew, and civil war threatened in 1529 and then broke out in 1531. Zwingli counseled the war and entered the fray as chaplain at the side of the citizens of Zurich and their allies.
Zwingli's influence on the church-state relations of the cantons that became Protestant was profound and durable. Huldreich Zwingli experienced and contributed to the profound changes in religious and intellectual life that, arising in the early 1500s, permanently affected Western civilization. He accepted the supreme authority of the Scriptures, but he applied it more rigorously and comprehensively to all doctrines and practices and his movement did not evolve into a church.
(Next to Luther himself, Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) was pr...)
(This historic book may have numerous typos and missing te...)
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(Original ed. issued as v. 1 of Translations and reprints ...)
The doctrinal matter that set Zwingli apart from Luther on the one hand and Roman Catholicism on the other was that of the Eucharist. Zwingli denied the real presence of Christ in the Host and insisted that the Eucharist was not the repetition of Christ's sacrifice but only a respectful remembrance. Since Jesus was God as well as man one performance of the act of redemption was enough. Moreover, the Scriptures contain all Christian truth and what cannot be found therein must be ruthlessly cast from the true Church. Thus the concept of purgatory, the hierarchy, the veneration of relics and images, the primacy of the pope, and canon law must all be cast aside.
