DIVISIONS.
SWITZERLAND—GERMANY. 1523-1527.
CHAPTER I.
Unity in Diversity—Primitive Fidelity and Liberty—Formation of Romish Unity—Leo Juda and the Monk—Zwingle's Theses—The Disputation of January.
UNITY IN DIVERSITY—PRIMITIVE LIBERTY.
We are about to contemplate the diversities, or, as they have been called, the variations of the Reformation. These diversities are one of its most essential characteristics.
Unity in diversity and diversity in unity, is a law of nature as well as of the Church.
Truth is like the light of the sun: it descends from heaven one and ever the same; and yet it assumes different colours upon earth, according to the objects on which it fails. In like manner, formularies somewhat different may sometimes express the same christian idea considered under different aspects.
How dull would creation be if this boundless variety of forms and colours, which gives it beauty, were replaced by an absolute uniformity! But how melancholy also would be its appearance, if all created beings did not form a magnificent unity!
Divine unity has its rights, so also has human diversity. In religion we must suppress neither God nor man. If you have not unity, your religion is not of God; if you have not diversity, the religion is not of man; but it ought to be of both. Would you erase from creation one of the laws that God himself has imposed on it,—that of infinite diversity? And even things without life giving sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped?[464] But if there is a diversity in religion arising from the difference of individuality, and which consequently must subsist even in heaven, there is one that proceeds from man's rebellion, and this is indeed a great calamity.