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Bern and some other cantons ranged themselves under her banner; that five cantons, adhering more closely to ancient prejudices, joined in more intimate alliances with the Catholic powers; that, exasperated, partly by the religious defection of their brethren, and partly by the abuse of a temporary ascendancy gained by the Zurichians, they took arms against them; that Zurich, deaf to the entreaties of Zuinglius, heard the note of preparation" in the opposite cantons, without arming herself for the battle; that, at length, surprised into an unequal fight, her forces were defeated, and Zuinglius himself, who was appointed chaplain to the army, killed at the first onset. We give this last interesting event in the words of the author.

"In the beginning of the battle, while Zwingle was encouraging the troops by his exhortations, he received a mortal wound, fell in the press, and remained senseless on the field of battle while the enemy were pursuing their victory. On recovering his consciousness, he raised himself with difficulty crossed his feeble hands upon his breast, and lifted his dying eyes to heaven. Some Catholic soldiers who had remained behind, found him in this attitude. Without knowing him, they offered him a confessor: Zwingle would have replied, but was unable to articulate; he refused by a motion of the

head. The soldiers then exhorted him to recommend his soul to the Holy Virgin. A • Die second sign of refusal enraged them. then, obstinate heretic!' cried one, and pierced him with his sword.

"It was not till the next day that the body of the reformer was found, and exposed to the view of the army. Among those whom curiosity attracted, several had known him, and without sharing his religious opinions, had admired his eloquence, and done justice to the uprightness of his intentions: these were unable to view his features, which death had not changed, without emotion. A former colleague of Zwingle's, who had left Zurich on account of the reformation, was among the crowd. He gazed a long time upon him who had been his adversary, and at length said with emotion, Whatever may have been thy faith, I am sure that thou wast always sin. gere, and that thou lovedst thy country.

May God take thy soul to his mercy!'». pp. 320-322.

After this fatal catastrophe, the cantons of Zurich and Bern felt make a themselves compelled to separate peace; and Protestantism seemed to be reduced to her last resources. But such is the power of God to educe good out of evil, that the very defeat of the Protestants roused them to those exertions, and. to that unanimity, which finally triumphed over every obstacle.

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first emotion of terror was past, When," says the author, "the they blushed to have believed that the fate of their cause was attached

to the life of a single man. The establishments founded by the reformer became the source of new. prosperity. An active charity, a patriarchal simplicity, and manners still more powerful than laws, formed the noble legacy bequeathed by Zuinglius to his country."

Such is the brief sketch which the work before us has enabled us to lay before our readers, of the life of Zuinglius; and however dull or obscure our narrative may have been, we take all the shame to ourselves, for M. Hess is wanting. neither in spirit nor luminousness. Still there are defects in his work, which, though harsher critics might be disposed to impute to a different cause, we are content to set down

to a want of space. These defects are chiefly the absence of those discriminating touches by which his readers would have gained a more intimate acquaintance with the reformer; the want of a fuller developement of his fundamental principles of action, and of those peculiarities, whether good or bad, which gave a distinct character to that reformation, which, under God, he organized and accomplished. Some hints, indeed, the author has thrown out upon each of these points, but by no means enough to satisfy the inquiring mind. Will our readers forgive us, if we now proceed to attempt, from other sources, to supply

this defect, and to strike the balance of good and evil, as well in the genius and character of Zuinglius, as in his doctrinal sentiments.

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In the first place, there were many qualities in the mind of Zuinglius, which eminently fitted him for the mighty work he was called, under God, to accomplish. He combined, to an extraordinary degree, two qualities which rarely incorporate-zeal and prudence. His piety was ardent; his moral conduct such as almost to defy slander. A certain sweetness of manner, like the setting of the jewel, presented his high qualities under the most attractive form. Whether in the library of Einsiedeln, or in the chapter and senate of Zurich, he "bowed the hearts" of his associates like the heart of one man." Indeed, the spirit of union which prevailed among the reformers of Switzerland has no parallel in history, except in the first ages of Christianity. A community of interests or schemes may unite political adventurers for a season. But in that case, as "every man seeks his own," when any individual has gained his peculiar end, the general camp is deserted. The union of Christians was an union of principle. Each man was carried out of himself; each cast his individual gain into the general stock; each stood ready to sacrifice himself, that he might assist to save a world. But to return to Zuinglius. In addition to his moral qualities, the love and successful pursuit of letters was a powerful instrument in his hands. Men listened with deference to the instructions of teachers, who, like our reformer and Ecolampadius, were the most learned men of their country. Those might with impunity decry the systems of heathen or scholastic philosophy, who were known to have grappled with their difficulties; or might boldly suggest new comments upon Scripture, who were able to found them upon a fuller comprehension of those original lan

guages in which they were composed. In weighing out the evil qualities which entered into the character of Zuinglius, we find little to set against the qualities in the opposite scale. It will be seen, in the estimate of his doctrinal opinions, that his moderation and candour were not always proof against the heated atmosphere of the times. But these are rather the few wrinkles of the countenance than the features or lines of which it was made up. There was, on the whole, a moral grandeur in the man, well suited to the vastness of his enterprise. Like the mountains of his own Switzerland, he seems to rise above the turbulent atmosphere by which he is enveloped. Or, to describe him in these noble lines, dictated to the bard perhaps amidst those very mountains;

"As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form. Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the

storm;

Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,

Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

In delineating the opinions of Zuinglius, it can scarcely be necessary to notice his rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation, of image worship, of private confession to the priest, of purchased absolution, or the formal commutation of crime for money. Neither should we feel it necessary to dwell upon two other master principles which he held, in common with all the reformers, but that some in the present age seem, in a measure, to have forgotten that these were the principles. of the Reformation. The first of these was, that the " Bible was to be freely circulated amongst the people; and they themselves suffered, under God, and with the aid of their parochial ministers, to search for their creed amidst the pages of their Bible." Zuinglius found that book which the Lamb" died to "unseal," a "sealed " volume, to the bulk of his countrymen. His first step in reform was to open and dis, play it to the world. For the cas

nonical lessons he substituted the whole word of God. Instead of the partial selections, or measured comments of the Church of Rome, he bestowed on them the whole legacy of Christ to his creatures. He suspected no evil to religion, or to the reformation, from the widest diffusion of the Bible, even though no comment should accompany it; and did not dam up the word of God till he could pour his own theses into the same channel. Could he have lived to see, instead of the scanty distribution of the oracles of God by a single hand, the hands and hearts of a great nation conspiring and co-operating for this great end, he would, perhaps, early as he died, have said, in the spirit of old Simeon, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." But had he lived also to see Christian doctors and professors draining their inkstands to paint the evils of such a combination, and, not satisfied with calm discussion, in their, we had almost said, unholy fervour shewing a disposition to change "their pens for truncheons; ink for blood;" he would have discovered that the hydra of Popery had many heads; that the fathers of the reformation could not transfer to their children, with their chairs and gowns, that spirit of manly appeal to the Bible by which they were characterised; and that a disguised fear of the circulation of the Scriptures in one age was likely to effect what the violent suppression of them had accomplished in another.

Another principle, strong enough to be called a passion, in Zuinglius and the whole band of reformers, was that of proclaiming to mankind the doctrine of justification by faith in the merits of Jesus Christ. Some modern writers are fond of representing the reformation as a mere effort on the part of the reformers to shake off the burden of papal ceremonies. But it ought rather to be contemplated as the re-assertion of this grand principle, the establishment of which was sure to

level to the ground all the gingerbread fabric of ceremonies which the Church of Rome had substituted in its place. The image of Dagon must fall when the ark of God is introduced. It was not the mere desire to abolish ceremonies that influenced the reformers; for a ceremonial religion is better than none. But it was to substitute the Saviour for real or fancied saints; it was to elevate him to the throne which they had so long usurped; it was to teach men to "glory" not in themselves, or in canonised men or bones, but " in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ;" that they lived and died. The reformation is ever to be considered as the triumph of principle over force; and of the particular principle of justification by grace, through faith in a crucified Redeemer, over every device which priestcraft, or pride, or superstition,. had conceived, for propitiating an offended God. Is it not incredible, then, that men should be continually starting up to expose this principle as a sort of new effervescence of Methodism, a fresh wart or wen upon the fair countenance of the Protestant faith? We are convinced that a vast majority of the errors in religion may be traced to that unremitting and indefatigable desire of the natural mind to do without Christ. In this respect, Popery is to be considered not as the mere chance-religion of a country or an age-as a church accidentally founded and cemented by the labours or arts of a few cardinals and pontiffs: it is to be considered as the real antiChrist, the religion of human nature; as the great confederation of mankind to get rid of Christ; as an organised effort to substitute a sort of gilded machinery for that grand pillar of salvation, pardon by the free grace of God, and through the atoning blood of his Son. It was to such a confederation, then deeply entrenched and guarded by its rich temporalities, and invested, by its mere age, with a fictitious sanctity, that Zuinglius and his brethren op

posed themselves. Carried; by the grace of God, and the force of this their master principle, through every obstacle, they triumphed in defiance of the strength of their enemies, and even of their own deficiencies, and built up that church which is the mother of us all.

But it is time to notice some of the defects in the opinions of Zuinglius defects almost merged, indeed, in his general adherence to the fundamental principles of the Gospel. M. Hess should, however, have felt, that the notice of these was essential to his fidelity as a biographer. In resisting the attempt, then, of Luther to substitute consubstantiation for transubstantiation, he rendered a service to religion. But when he went further, and resolved the sacrament into a mere memorial of the death of Christ, denying even his spiritual presence, and the spiritual participation by faith in his body and blood, he stript that sacrament of all that most deeply interests the devout

communicant.

Upon the subject of original sin, there is an occasional ambiguity in the sentiments of this reformer. Yet upon this cardinal point, as well as on those of justification by faith, and the necessity of a new creation unto holiness by the power of the Holy Spirit, the early Confessions of the Helvetic Church, framed only four years after the death of Zuinglius, are so very clear, express, and unambiguous, so perfectly accordant with Scripture and with the articles of our own church, that we must suppose either that his doubt ful expressions were the effect of haste or inadvertence, or that our reformer gradually acquired more just views on the subject*. In his hostility to Rome, also, he was tempted, in some instances, to push his reforms to excess. Though he was far, for example, from maintaining (with Calvin afterwards) the complete equality of the clergy, we find him denominating bishops "the

See Christ. Obs. for 1805, p. 678.

wens and swellings of the church." In the same spirit, and inconsistently with his own more moderate pro ceedings, he says in one place, even of such ceremonies as are not founded in superstition nor are contrary to the word of God, that they may be tolerated till the day star become more bright; but that even these had better be abolished, provided it can be done without great offence. In like manner, passages are to be found in his works which go to establish a ceremonial of religion, not merely in opposition to papal pageantry, but cold, naked, ill constituted for a being like man compounded of body and spirit, whose perception of right. depends much upon the medium. through which it is seen, who rarely examines truth in the abstract but truth with its various associations, and who, if he does not receive religion through the senses, yet seldom receives it where the senses are violently offended. Some attempt, it should be added, has been made to establish the laxity of the reformer's opinions upon the duties of subjects to their government; and, in the pages of a man controverting the despotic dogmas of Popery, questionable sentiments upon this point are not unlikely to be found. But his general strain of writing; the steady cooperation he experienced from the senate of Zurich; his uniform resistance to the insubordination of the Anabaptists; the charges frequently brought against him of investing the state with too much power in the government of the church; are facts which seem sufficient to repel the imputation. It should be remembered also, that his political principles were not learned on the fat level of Germany, or expressed amidst the prostrate cities or circles of the empire; but imbibed on the mountains of Switzerland, and taught to a nation of freemen.

It must also be admitted, that some of the sentiments occasionally

enounced by Zuinglius, in the course of his polemical writings, though they do not affect the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, are never theless rash, crude, and unwarranted, and capable of being perverted to very mischievous purposes: but of this, nothing appears in the Helvetic Confession to which we have already alluded.

The point, however, in which we regard the character of Zuinglius as least defensible, is the intolerant spirit which he manifested towards the Anabaptists. This must partly be considered as the vice of the age in which he lived. At first, indeed, he recommended lenient measures to the senate, in the hope of reclaiming these enthusiasts; but he appears afterwards, on finding them irreclaimable, to have concurred in the sanguinary edict, by which the mere act of rebaptization was punishable with death. Nor was this law by any means inoperative. Many fell victims to its severity; and we find Zuinglius, in a work of his, entitled, Elenchos contra Catabaptistas, expressing himself respecting the treatment of the Anabaptists by the senate, in a way which shews that he approved of the cruel decree. Over this part of his life we should have been glad to draw a veil.

Having given so fuil an abstract of the narrative of the author, and having both noticed his deficien. cies and attempted to supply them, the translator will complain, if no portion of our attention should be bestowed upon her. Though her sex, of course, guarantees us from all that asperity which neglected translators sometimes impute to the critic, yet she writes too well to suffer us to run the smallest risk of incurring her displeasure. We shall therefore now devote a page or two to some comments upon her translation and preface.

Miss Aikin, then, has given us, as we have already intimated, a pleasing, and what we suppose to be a just, translation of her author.

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Must we add, that we devoutly wish she had been contented to bear the light trammels of translation, or at least, when extricated from them, she had not indulged in such erratic remarks as her short preface displays. We think, for instance, that she is a little harsh upon her author, when she says, p. xii., that "the attentive reader will observe occasionally, in the measured expressions of the biographer of Zwingle, and his scrupulous anxiety to draw a broad line of distinction between the more sober reformers, and the wild sects who were enemies of all regular government, that kind of apprehensiveness, which must necessarily haunt every man of free and generous sentiments, when writing under the eye of a despot.' Now we confess ourselves unable to discover any thing of the appre. hensiveness referred to by the trans. lator. The sole offence, according to our judgment, in the volume, is the terming Bonaparte, " "the greatest monarch of Europe." And when the ambiguous nature of the epithet great is considered, and it is remembered that the free consent of historians has bestowed it upon Louis XIV. and Frederick III. it is somewhat hard to question his title to this "bad eminence" who has, from the rank of a private adventurer, fought his way to the throne of the largest civilised empire that ever existed. We should be happy to see the title appropri ated exclusively to those who combined with great talents great virtues; but till it is, little more can be charged upon M. Hess, than that he has not originated so good a custom. As to his scrupulous anxiety to draw a broad line of distinction between the more sober reformers and the wild sects who were enemies to all regular government, he has so many abettors amongst the wise and the good, that the allegation of his fair antagonist will not sit heavily upon him. It was a duty in our judgment,most imperiously claimed from the author,

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