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Augustine that "man could be justified by faith alone," which was his great theological doctrine a doctrine adopted by many who never left the communion of the Church of Rome, before and since his day, and a doctrine which characterized the early reformers, Zwingle, Calvin, Knox, Cranmer, and the Puritans generally.
There is one chance for it, not in the second and third centuries, but in the fourth; I mean in the history of Aerius, Jovinian, and Vigilantius, men who may be called, by some sort of analogy, the Luther, Calvin, and Zwingle, of the fourth century.
Within a few years the followers of the reformers were divided into hostile sects and began to oppose and persecute each other. Luther denounced Zwingle as a heretic, and "the Calvinists would have no dealings with the Lutherans." The first Protestant creed was the Augsburg Confession . This date marks an important epoch.
But Zwingle contemplated political, as well as religious, changes, and, as early as 1527, two years before his conference with Luther at Marburg, had projected a league of all the reformers against the political authorities which opposed their progress. He combated the abuses of the state, as well as of the church.
Zwingle, when he provoked in German Switzerland the rupture with the church of Rome, had approved of the arrangement that the sovereign authority in matters of religion should pass into the hands of the civil powers.
Zwingle, from impulses of patriotism and courage, issued forth from his house, and joined the standard of his countrymen, not as a chaplain, but as an armed warrior. This was his mistake. "They who take the sword shall perish with the sword." The intrepid and enlightened reformer was slain in 1531, and, with his death, expired the hopes of his party.
But, in another quarter, it sprang up with new force, and was carried to an extent not favored in Germany. It was in Switzerland that the greatest approximation was made to the forms, if not to the spirit, of primitive Christianity. The great hero of this Swiss movement was Ulric Zwingle, the most interesting of all the reformers.
But, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, Luther in Germany and Zwingle in Switzerland had taken in hand the work of the Reformation, and before half that century had rolled by they had made the foundations of their new church so strong that their powerful adversaries, with Charles V. at their head, felt obliged to treat with them and recognize their position in the European world, though all the while disputing their right.
In the writings of Beza and Zwingle there are passages, in relation to the origin of evil, more offensive, if possible, than any we have adduced from Calvin and Melanchthon. The mode in which the reformers defended their common doctrine was, with some few exceptions, the same in substance.
The better specimens of this style of writing are found in the remains of Manuel and Zwingle. The boldness and license of his satires are far beyond modern toleration. His principal work is the "Exposition of the Christian Faith." His "Prophetic Almanac" was the selling book at all the fairs and markets of the day, and was read with an excitement far exceeding that produced by any modern novels.
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