[To prevent mistakes and delay, all communications for the Register should be addressed to the Editor, 2, Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row, E.C., and marked on the envelope "For Congregational Register."]

THE

CHRISTIAN WITNESS,

AND

CONGREGATIONAL MAGAZINE,

MARCH, 1868.

THE LIFE, PUBLIC AND DOMESTIC, OF ULRICH ZWINGLE.

Part First.

WE have already laid before our readers notices of the domestic life of the great German Reformers, Luther and Melancthon, and have seen how highly God's ordinance of marriage, and all the hallowed ties of family life therewith. connected, were honoured by the singular tenderness of affection, the purity, self-devotion, and wise authority which characterised these remarkable men in the endearing relations of husband, father, and head of a household. Our portraits would, however, be incomplete without some sketch of the noble Swiss Reformer, Huldreich Zwingle, who, take him for all in all, must be ever regarded as one of the finest types of a true Christian hero which the annals of history record.

Unfortunately the notices of his domestic life which have been preserved to us are much more scanty than those of his great German contemporaries, but the few that remain possess the deeper interest; and quite enough is left to show that in his character of husband and father and head of a family, as well as in all the other relations of life, the Church of Christ owed not less to his example than she did to his eloquent, fervent, and dauntless proclamation of the Gospel of the grace of God.

Huldreich Zwingle was born on New Year's day, 1484, in the village of Wildhaus, which stands on an Alpine height on the eastern extremity of the pleasant valley of Toggenburg. His parents were pious and respectable people. His father was a shepherd, among a race of shepherds, dwelling amid his own hills and meadows; and such was the confidence and esteem in which was held among his fellow-villagers that he had been raised by them to the office of head or Amman of the little community. The inhabitants of Wild

he

VOL. IV.-NEW SERIES.

H

haus had from time immemorial been known as a cheerful, song-loving people. In the first days of May, as soon as the mountains put on their coats of green, they drove their cattle, with the harmonious clang of bells, up to the higher pastures, and ever higher and higher continued to ascend, till by the end of July the loftiest Alp was reached. On the return of winter the flocks were driven downwards in the direction of the winter stalls. The long winter evenings were spent by the simple-hearted peasantry in rude hamlets dimly lighted by a tallow-candle, but the dreary time was lightened by the joyous voice of song or the pleasant tone of some musical instrument; for rare it was to meet with a cottage in which some of the inmates could not handle an instrument.

He was

In such a home as this Huldreich Zwingle first saw the light. one of a family of seven brothers and two sisters. From an early age he was distinguished for great vivacity of temperament and quickness of perception, and the eyes of his parents and other relatives rested upon him with satisfaction and hope. It was their desire that he should become a priest, as his father's and mother's brothers were. The mind of the boy received its first intellectual nourishment in his own home in the long winter evenings, when his father, in the circle of his family and intimate friends, was wont to tell stirring stories from Swiss history, showing how their native valley of Toggenburg had struggled for freedom, and at length secured possession of it, by allying themselves with the bold confederates who rolled back from their mountain steeps the hosts of Charles the Bold. Tales of this sort fell like sparks of living fire on the soul of young Huldreich, and kindled the flame of ardent love for his home and native country, which in his manhood burned with such intensity. Often also the boy hung on the lips of his pious grandmother, as she stirred his religious sentiment by legends of the saints and stories from Holy Scripture. But most of all, the sublime and solemn influences of nature in these grand mountain regions affected his ardent young soul. Amid the wonders of these Alpine heights there awoke within his breast an awful sense of the grandeur and majesty of God, which gradually filled his whole mind, and armed him for his conflict with the powers of darkness.

When the boy reached his eighth or ninth year, he was entrusted to the care of his father's brother, the Dean of Wesen. The Dean loved him as his own son, and sent him to the public school of Wesen, where his progress was so rapid that he soon outran the capabilities of the master to instruct him further. His uncle accordingly transferred him to a higher school in Basle; but here also the teaching did not long avail to answer the demands of the precocious scholar, and the conscientious master sent him home, recommending that he should be sent to a seminary better corresponding to his attainments. He was then placed under a celebrated teacher at Berne, where he made great progress in the Latin classics. Here his remarkable talents, and especially his genius for music, attracted the notice of the Dominican monks, who resolved to win him to their order. They succeeded in inducing him to enter their cloister, intending him to remain there till he was old enough to become a member of their order. But God delivered him from the snare of these

corrupted monks. His father and uncle heard of the danger in which he was, and at once recalled him home. By the advice of his uncle he was sent to the celebrated High School at Vienna, where he remained two years, laying in rich stores of intellectual wealth. He was now in his eighteenth year; and, eager not only to prosecute his studies, but to apply the results of his industry, he proceeded to Basle, and there became teacher of Latin in the School of St. Martin, at the same time attending the prelections of the High School. Here God provided him with a teacher higher than any he had hitherto known, one who led him to the green pastures of heavenly wisdom, as these are laid open in the Word of God.

This was Thomas Wittenbach, a man who, to a profound knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages, added a deep acquaintance with Holy Scripture. It was his delight to lead his pupils out of the barren deserts of school wisdom to the living streams of God's Word. "The time is not far off," he said, with prophetic wisdom, "when the scholastic theology will be swept away, and the old doctrine of the Church established in its room, on the foundation of God's Word. Absolution is a Romish cheat; the death of Christ is the only payment for our sins." Such teaching as this found a receptive soil in the heart of Zwingle, took deep root there, and bore noble fruit not long after.

It was at the feet of this teacher that Zwingle met with Leo Juda, with whom, as Jonathan with David, he entered into a covenant of friendship which death only interrupted, while it could not dissolve, for they were brothers in their ardent search after truth, and in their devoted love to Him who is the truth and the life. When Zwingle had remained nearly four years in Basle, he received a call to become pastor at Glarus, being elected by the free votes of the community. He accepted it, and, not yet having been consecrated to the priesthood, he went to receive consecration from the hands of the Bishop. On his return he performed mass for the first time at Wildhaus, his native town, being then twenty-two years of age.

He entered on his duties as a priest with a deep sense of his responsibilities as a shepherd of souls. His own words are "Young as I was, the office of priesthood filled me with greater fear than joy, for this was ever present to me, that the blood of the sheep who perished through any neglect or guilt of mine would be required at my hands." "In becoming priest," writes his friend, Myconius, "he devoted himself with his whole soul to the search after Divine truth, knowing well how much devolves on him to whom the flock of Christ is entrusted." Some time after his settlement in Glarus, in order to facilitate his study of the Scriptures, he began to teach himself the Greek language, and in a short time had so mastered its difficulties that he could read not only the Greek Testament, but any Greek author with ease. With his own hand he copied

out in Greek all the epistles of Paul, that he might carry them about with him and learn them by heart. He studied the Fathers and other interpreters of the Word of God, in order to penetrate deeper into its sense. At the same time, deeply convinced that the Holy Spirit alone can reveal the true meaning of the inspired Word, he sought earnestly for His divine teaching, wrestling with God in prayer for the inestimable blessing of His Holy Spirit to unfold to him

the wondrous things of His law. And that he might not, under the semblance of the Spirit's guidance, take up that which was false, he carefully compared one passage of Scripture with another, interpreting the darker by the plainer, so that, as Myconius tells us, "it was apparent to every one who heard him commenting on a difficult passage, that not man but the Spirit Himself was his teacher."

The more deeply he sunk his shaft in the mine of Scripture, the more his eyes were opened to see the corruptions that prevailed in the Church. Having gradually arrived at a firm faith that we require no other mediator but Christ, and that none but Christ alone can mediate between God and man, he began to proclaim evangelical truth, without, however, making any direct allusion to Romish errors. He wished first to make an entrance for the truth in the hearts of his hearers, believing that if the true were once comprehended and received the false must be detected by its light. But in spite of this wise moderation he did not long escape the charge of heresy. He began also, after the example of his Divine Master, to denounce from the pulpit certain base vices, especially the taking of gifts from princes, and baleful mercenary wars; for he knew that till these sources of iniquity were closed, Divine truth would find no entrance.

After ten years' unwearied and laborious teaching at Glarus, during which his uncompromising denunciation of the corruptions and vices that prevailed stirred up many enemies against him, he was invited by the Administrator of the Cloister of Einsiedlin to be his helper, and accepted the call, believing that, at this famous sanctuary, to which crowds of pilgrims repaired from all parts of Switzerland and from other countries, he would be placed on a vantage ground for proclaiming the words of eternal life. He left Glarus in the summer of 1516, to the deep sorrow of the larger and better portion of the community, and came to Einsiedlin, where he spent the next two years of

his life.

Here, properly, commenced his career as a Reformer. Slowly, and as the result of much thought and study, and earnest prayer, he had reached the firm conviction that, "The Word of God is the alone sure directory for faith and practice, and Christ our only salvation." In his own heart he had realized how precious and dear that saying is, that "Jesus Christ has come into the world to save sinners," and from the fulness of a deep-felt experience he began to proclaim the Gospel of the grace of God; and soon its blessed fruits sprang up all around. The work also found support where least of all we should have expected it. The then Abbot of the cloister was a man of great simplicity of character and of true piety. As a youth he had been forced by selfish relatives to join the monks, but he had no sympathy with the monstrous claims of the priesthood, and his simple piety revolted from the corruptions of his Church in doctrine and morals. It is recorded of him that on one occasion, when reproached by the visitors of his order for neglect of the Mass, he answered, "I shall tell you plainly what I hold of the mass. If the Lord Jesus Christ be really in the host, I know not how highly you may esteem yourselves; but one thing I know, that I, a poor monk, am not