Such, from the commencement of his career, was the man, whom some have not scrupled to represent as having wished to subject the Bible to human reason. "Philosophy and theology," said he, "ceased not to raise up objections against me. I, at length, arrived at this conclusion, 'We must leave all these things, and seek our knowledge of God only in his Word.' I began," continues he, "earnestly to supplicate the Lord to give me his light, and though I read only the text of Scripture, it became far clearer to me than if I had read a host of commentators." Comparing the Scriptures with themselves and explaining passages that were obscure by such as were more clear,[635] he soon had a thorough knowledge of the Bible, especially the New Testament.[636] When Zuinglius thus turned toward the Holy Scriptures, Switzerland took her first step in the Reformation. Accordingly, when he expounded the Scriptures, every one felt that his lessons came from God, and not from man.[637] "Work all divine!" here exclaims Oswald Myconius; "thus was the knowledge of heavenly truth restored to us!"
Zuinglius did not, however, despise the expositions of the most celebrated doctors: at a later period, he studied Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Chrysostom, but not as authorities. "I study the doctors," says he, "with the same feelings with which one asks a friend, 'What do you understand by this?'" The Holy Scripture was, according to him, the touch-stone by which the most holy of the doctors were themselves to be tested.[638]
Zuinglius's step was slow, but progressive. He did not come to the truth like Luther amid those tempests which compel the soul to seek a speedy shelter. He arrived at it by the peaceful influence of Scripture, whose power gradually gains upon the heart. Luther reached the wished-for shore across the billows of the boundless deep; Zuinglius, by allowing himself to glide along the stream. These are the two principal ways by which God leads men. Zuinglius was not fully converted to God and his gospel till the first period of his sojourn at Zurich; yet, in 1514 or 1515, at the moment when the strong man began to bend the knee to God, praying for the understanding of his Word, the rays of that pure light by which he was afterwards illumined, first began to gleam upon him.
At this period, a poem of Erasmus, in which Jesus Christ was introduced addressing man as perishing by his own fault, made a powerful impression on Zuinglius. When alone in his study, he repeated the passage in which Jesus complains that all grace is not sought from him, though he is the source of all that is good. "All!" said Zuinglius, "All!" And this word was incessantly present to his mind. "Are there then creatures, saints, from whom we ought to ask assistance? No! Christ is our only treasure."[639]
Zuinglius did not confine his reading to Christian writings. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the sixteenth century is the profound study of the Greek and Roman authors. The poetry of Hesiod, Homer, Pindar, enraptured him, and he has left us commentaries, or characteristics, on the two last poets. It seemed to him that Pindar spoke of his gods in such sublime strains that he must have had some presentiment of the true God. He studied Cicero and Demosthenes thoroughly, and learned from them both the art of the orator and the duties of the citizen. He called Seneca a holy man. The Swiss mountaineer loved also to initiate himself in the mysteries of nature, through the writings of Pliny. Thucydides, Sallust, Livy, Cæsar, Suetonius, Plutarch, and Tacitus, taught him to know the world. He has been censured for his enthusiastic admiration of the great men of antiquity, and it is true that some of his observations on this subject cannot be defended. But if he honoured them so much, it was because he thought he saw in them not human virtues, but the influence of the Holy Spirit. The agency of God, far from confining itself to ancient times within the limits of Palestine, extended, according to him, to the whole world.[640] "Plato," said he, "has also drunk at the Divine source. And if the two Catos, if Camillus, if Scipio had not been truly religious, would they have been so magnanimous?"[641]
ZUINGLIUS IN REGARD TO ERASMUS.
Zuinglius diffused around him a love of letters. Several choice youths were trained in his school. "You offered me not only books, but also yourself," wrote Valentine Tschudi, son of one of the heroes of the wars of Burgundy; and this young man, who at that time had already studied at Vienna and Bâle, under the most celebrated teachers, adds, "I have never met with any one who explained the classics with so much precision and profundity as yourself."[642] Tschudi repaired to Paris, and was able to compare the spirit which prevailed in that university, with that which he had found in the narrow Alpine valley, over which impend the gigantic peaks and eternal snows of the Dodi, the Glarnisch, the Viggis, and the Freyberg. "How frivolously," says he, "the French youth are educated! No poison is so bad as the sophistical art in which they are trained—an art which stupifies the senses, destroys the judgment, brutifies the whole man. Man is thenceforth, like the echo, an empty sound. Ten women could not keep pace with one of these rhetoricians.[643] In their prayers even they present their sophisms to God, (I know the fact,) and pretend, by their syllogisms, to constrain the Holy Spirit to hear them." Such, then, were Paris and Glaris; the intellectual metropolis of Christendom, and a village of Alpine shepherds. A ray of the Divine Word gives more light than all human wisdom.
CHAP. IV.
Zuinglius in regard to Erasmus—Oswald Myconius—The Vagrants—Œcolampadius—Zuinglius at Marignan—Zuinglius and Italy—Method of Zuinglius—Commencement of Reform—Discovery.