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In later years, after Amorbach's death, the marked advance in the output of the firm as regards type and paper and title-pages and designs may be attributed to Froben, who was man of business enough to realize the importance of getting good men to serve him Erasmus to edit books, Gerbell and Oecolampadius to correct the proofs, Graf and Holbein to provide the ornaments.

He is the man who will afterwards reform Geneva and persuade Calvin to stay there. Though at first Oecolampadius began to introduce novelties into the church service with caution, Erasmus saw these innovations with alarm. Especially the fanaticism of Farel, whom he hated bitterly. It was these men who retarded what he still desired and thought possible: a compromise.

Zwingli and Oecolampadius hastened at once to prepare new pamphlets in reply, and to publish them with a dedication to the Elector John and the Landgrave Philip. But Luther adhered to his resolve. He let them have the last word, as he had done with Erasmus. They had not contributed anything new to the dispute.

Erasmus would not or could not keep his departure a secret. He sent the most precious of his possessions in advance, and when this had drawn attention to his plan, he purposely invited Oecolampadius to a farewell talk. The reformer declared his sincere friendship for Erasmus, which the latter did not decline, provided he granted him to differ on certain points of dogma.

Luther had just been freshly excited against the Zwinglians by a writing found among the papers Zwingli left behind him, and which Bullinger had published with high eulogiums upon the author, and also by a correspondence that had just appeared between Zwingli and Oecolampadius.

Zwingli and Oecolampadius met the Strasburg theologians, Butzer and Hedio, and Jacob Sturm, the leading citizen of that town, on September 29, at Marburg.

Luther, after reading the last-mentioned treatises of Zwingli and Oecolampadius, resolved to publish one answer more, the last; for Satan, he said, must not be suffered to hinder him further in the prosecution of other and more important matters. At this time he was particularly anxious to complete his translation of the Bible, being now hard at work with the books of the Prophets.

After Berne had, meanwhile, reformed itself in 1528, Oecolampadius demanded a decision also for Basle. Since the close of 1528 the town had been on the verge of civil war.

Among the number of theologians who ranked next to Erasmus, the well-known John Oecolampadius, then a preacher at Augsburg, and almost of the same age as Luther, came forward in his support, towards the end of 1519, with a pamphlet directed against Eck.

Not only did Zwingli and Oecolampadius, in their anti-literal and figurative interpretation of the words of institution, endeavour to support it by Scriptural analogies, more or less appropriate, but in the practical objections they raised, which Luther treated as over-curious subtleties of human reason, they were actuated in reality by motives of a religious character.