LIFE OF

ULRICH ZWINGLI

the swiss patriot and reformer

By SAMUEL SIMPSON

NEW YORK: THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO.

33-37 East Seventeenth Street, Union Square North

Ulrich Zwingli.

(Reproduced from a photograph of the Hans Asper portrait in the Zurich City Library.)

Copyright, 1902

by

THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO.

Published September, 1902

New York

Kay Printing House

66-68 Centre St.

TO MY WIFE

PREFATORY NOTE

The Protestant Reformation has proved a favorite theme with church historians, and to name or even to enumerate the volumes that have been written on the subject would be of itself a large undertaking. The interest felt by a great company of readers in this particular era and its special attractiveness to historical writers—facts amply attested by the existence of a vast and rapidly increasing literature—is a circumstance so well recognized and clearly understood that the writer feels that the briefest explanation or apology will suffice to account for the appearance of an additional book.

As subjects of study, the men who played the leading parts in the great drama of the Reformation are more interesting than the events in which they figured. The chief interest in the German Reformation centers about Luther; in the Scottish Reformation, about Knox; in the Swiss Reformation, about Zwingli or Calvin, according as attention is directed to the German-speaking or French-speaking portion of that country. That Luther fully deserves the large measure of consideration accorded him by historians, and the affectionate veneration in which his name is held by all branches of the Protestant church, no one will feel disposed to question; that Zwingli, his contemporary, is worthy of nothing better than the meager place to which fame has assigned him, many, from a sense of justice, find it hard to admit. Luther and Zwingli were called of Providence to perform, at the same time and in adjoining countries, tasks almost identical. The moral and spiritual equipment of each for the inestimable service they were to render to the cause of Christianity was such as apparently to entitle each to a like measure of credit and to an equally affectionate regard on the part of posterity. That writers of history have proved so partial respecting their memory is traceable not so much to any essential difference in their characters or disparity in their achievements as to accidents of birth, by which it was determined that the life and labors of one should be set upon a large stage—made the focus of the world’s gaze—while the other was called to perform the same noble part in the presence of fewer witnesses and in a theater of miniature dimensions.

When materials were collected for this biography, with the exception of one or two translations, there was no life of Zwingli in the English language worthy of the name. An excellent volume on Zwingli (in English) has recently appeared, the joint work of Professors Jackson, Vincent, and Foster. Students of Zwingli will appreciate most this latest ...