Chapter II (2)

The First Peace of Kappel was only a truce, and left both parties irritated with each other. The friction was increased when the Protestants discovered that the Romanist cantons would not admit free preaching within their territories. They also shrewdly suspected that, despite the tearing and burning of the documents, the understanding with Austria was still maintained. An event occurred which seemed to justify their suspicions. An Italian condottiere, Giovanni Giacomo de' Medici, had seized and held (1525-31) the strong position called the Rocco di Musso on the Lake of Como, and from this stronghold he dominated the whole lake. This ruffian had murdered Martin Paul and his son, envoys from the Graubünden to Milan, and had crossed the lake and harried the fertile valley of the Adda, known as the Val Tellina, which was then within the territories of the Graubünden (Grisons). The Swiss Confederacy were bound to defend their neighbours; but when appeal was made, the Romanist cantons refused, and the hand of Austria was seen behind the refusal. Besides, at the Federal Diets the Romanist cantons had refused to listen to any complaints of persecutions for religion within their lands. At a meeting between Zurich and her allies, it was resolved that the Romanist cantons should be compelled to abolish the system of foreign pensions, and permit free preaching within their territories. Zurich was for open war, but the advice of Bern prevailed. It was resolved that if the Romanist cantons would not agree to these proposals, Zurich and her allies should prevent wine, wheat, salt, and iron from passing through their territories to the Forest cantons. The result was that the Forest cantons declared war, invaded Zurich while that canton was unprepared, fought and won the battle of Kappel, at which Zwingli was slain. He had accompanied the little army of Zurich as its chaplain. The victory of the Romanists produced a Second Peace of Kappel which reversed the conditions of the first. War indemnities were exacted from most of the Protestant cantons. It was settled that each canton was to be left free to manage its own religious affairs; that the _Christian Civic League_ was to be dissolved; and a number of particular provisions were made which practically secured the rights of Romanist without corresponding advantages to Protestant minorities. The territories of Zurich were left untouched, but the city was compelled by the charter of Kappel to grant rights to her rural districts. She bound herself to consult them in all important matters, and particularly not to make war or peace without their consent.

As a result of this ruinous defeat, and of the death of Zwingli which accompanied it, Zurich lost her place as the leading Protestant canton, and the guidance of the Reformation movement fell more and more into the hands of Geneva, which was an ally but not a member of the Confederation. Another and more important permanent result of this Second Peace of Kappel was that it was seen in Switzerland as in Germany that while the Reformation could not be destroyed, it could not win for itself the whole country, and that Roman Catholics and Protestants must divide the cantons and endeavour to live peaceably side by side.

The history of the Reformation in Switzerland after the death of Zwingli is so linked with the wider history of the movement in Germany and in Geneva, that it can scarcely be spoken about separately. It is also intimately related to the differences which separated Zwingli from Luther in the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

§ 7. _The Sacramental Controversy._[37]

In the Bern Disputation of 1528, the fourth thesis said "it cannot be proved from the Scripture that the Body and Blood of Christ are substantially and corporeally received in the Eucharist,"[38] and the statement became a distinctive watchword of the early Swiss Reformation. This thesis, a negative one, was perhaps the earliest official statement of a bold attempt to get rid of the priestly miracle in the Mass, which was the strongest theoretical and practical obstacle to the acceptance of the fundamental Protestant thought of the spiritual priesthood of all believers. The question had been seriously exercising the attention of all the leading theologians of the Reformation, and this very trenchant way of dismissing it had suggested itself simultaneously to theologians in the Low Countries, in the district of the Upper Rhine, and in many of the imperial cities. It had been proclaimed in all its naked simplicity by Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt, the theologian of the German democracy; but it was Zwingli who worked at the subject carefully, and who had produced a reasonable if somewhat defective theory based on a rather shallow exegesis, in which the words of our Lord, "This _is_ My Body," were declared to mean nothing but "This _signifies_ My Body." Luther, always disposed to think harshly of anything that came from Carlstadt, inclined to exaggerate his influence with the German Protestant democracy, believing with his whole heart that in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper the elements Bread and Wine were more than the bare signs of the Body and Blood of the Lord, was vehemently moved to find such views concerning a central doctrine of Christianity spreading through his beloved Germany. He never paused to ask whether the opinions he saw adopted with eagerness in most of the imperial cities were really different from those of Carlstadt (for that is one of the sad facts in this deplorable controversy). He simply denounced them, and stormed against Zwingli, whose name was spread abroad as their author and propagator. Nürnberg was almost the only great city that remained faithful to him. It was the only city also which was governed by the ancient patriciate, and in which the democracy had little or no power. When van Hoen and Karl Stadt in the Netherlands, Hedio at Mainz, Conrad Sam at Ulm, when the preachers of Augsburg, Strassburg, Frankfurt, Reutlingen, and other cities accepted and taught Zwingli's doctrine of the Eucharist, Luther and his immediate circle saw a great deal more than a simple division in doctrine. It was something more than the meaning of the Holy Supper or the exegesis of a difficult text which rent Protestantism in two, and made Luther and Zwingli appear as the leaders of opposing parties in a movement where union was a supreme necessity after the decision at Speyer in 1529. The theological question was complicated by social and political ideas, which, if not acknowledged openly, were at least in the minds of the leaders who took sides in the dispute. On the one side were men whom Luther held to be in part responsible for the Peasants' War, who were the acknowledged leaders of that democracy which he had learnt to distrust if not to fear, who still wished to link the Reformation to vast political schemes, all of which tended to weaken the imperial power by means of French and other alliances, and who only added to their other iniquities a theological theory which, he honestly believed, would take away from believers their comforting assurance of union with their Lord in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper.

The real theological difference after all did not amount to so much as is generally said. Zwingli's doctrine of the Holy Supper was not the crude theory of Carlstadt; and Luther might have seen this if he had only fairly examined it. The opposed views were, in fact, complementary, and the pronounced ideas of each were implicitly, though not expressly, held by the other. Luther and Zwingli approached the subject from two different points of view, and in debate they neither understood nor were exactly facing each other.

The whole Christian Church, during all the centuries, has found three great ideas embodied in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper, and all three have express reference to the death of the Saviour on the Cross for His people. The thoughts are Proclamation, Commemoration, and Participation or Communion. In the Supper, believers proclaim the death and what it means; they commemorate the Sacrifice; and they partake in or have communion with the crucified Christ, who is also the Risen Saviour. The mediæval Church had insisted that this sacramental union with Christ was in the hands of the priesthood to give or to withhold. Duly ordained priests, and they alone, could bring the worshippers into such a relation with Christ as would make the Sacramental participation a possible thing: and out of this claim had grown the mediæval theory of Transubstantiation. It had also divided the Sacrament of the Supper into two distinct rites (the phrase is not too strong)--the Mass and the Eucharist--the one connecting itself instinctively with the commemoration and the other with the participation.

Protestants united in denying the special priestly miracle needed to bring Christ and His people together in the Sacrament; but it is easy to see that they might approach the subject by the two separate paths of Mass or Eucharist. Zwingli took the one road and Luther happened on the other.

Zwingli believed that the mediæval Church had displaced the scriptural thought of _commemoration_, and put the non-scriptural idea of _repetition_ in its place. For the mediæval priest claimed that in virtue of the miraculous power given in ordination, he could really change the bread and wine into the actual physical Body of Jesus, and, when this was done, that he could reproduce over again the agony of the Cross by crushing it with his teeth. This idea seemed to Zwingli to be utterly profane; it dishonoured the One great Sacrifice; it was unscriptural; it depended on a priestly gift of working a miracle which did not exist. Then he believed that the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel forbade all thought that spiritual benefits could come from a mere partaking with the mouth. It was the atonement worked out by Christ's death that was appropriated and commemorated in the Holy Supper; and the atonement is always received by faith. Thus the two principal thoughts in the theory of Zwingli are, that the mediæval doctrine must be purified by changing the idea of repetition of the death of Christ for commemoration of that death, and the thought of manducating with the teeth for that of faith which is the faculty by which spiritual benefits are received. But Zwingli believed that a living faith always brought with it the presence of Christ, for there can be no true faith without actual spiritual contact with the Saviour. Therefore Zwingli held that there was a Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Supper; but a spiritual presence brought by the faith of the believing communicant and not by the elements of Bread and Wine, which were only the signs _representing_ a Body which was corporeally absent. The defect of this theory is that it does not make the Presence of Christ in the Sacrament in any way depend on the ordinance; there is no sacramental presence other than what there is in any act of faith. It was not until Zwingli had elaborated his theory that he sought for and found an explanation of the words of our Lord, and taught that _This is My Body_, must mean _This signifies My Body_. His theory was entirely different from that of Carlstadt, with which Luther always identified it.

Luther approached the whole subject by a different path. What repelled him in the mediæval doctrine of the Holy Supper was the way in which he believed it to trample on the spiritual priesthood of all believers. He protested against Transubstantiation and private Masses, because they were the most flagrant instances of that contempt. When he first preached on the subject (1519) it was to demand the "cup" for the laity, and he makes use of an expression in his sermon which reveals how his thoughts were tending. He says that in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper "the communicant is so united to Christ _and His saints_, that Christ's life and sufferings _and the lives and sufferings of the saints_ become his." No one held more strongly than Luther that the Atonement was made by our Lord, and by Him alone. Therefore he cannot be thinking of the Atonement when he speaks of union with the lives and the sufferings of the saints. He believes that the main thing in the Sacrament is that it gives such a companionship with Jesus as His disciples and saints have had. There was, of course, a reference to the death of Christ and to the Atonement, for apart from that death no companionship is possible; but the reference is indirect, and through the thought of the fellowship. In the Sacrament we touch Christ as His disciples might have touched Him when He lived on earth, and as His glorified saints touch Him now. This reference, therefore, clearly shows that Luther saw in the Sacrament of the Supper the presence of the glorified Body of our Lord, and that the primary use of the Sacrament was to bring the communicant into contact with that glorified Body. This required a presence (and Luther thought a presence extended in space) of the glorified Body of Christ in the Sacrament in order that the communicant might be in actual contact with it. But communion with the Living Christ implies the appropriation of the death of Christ, and of the Atonement won by His death. Thus the reference to the Crucified Christ which Zwingli reaches directly, Luther attains indirectly; and the reference to the Living Risen Christ which Zwingli reaches indirectly, Luther attains directly. Luther avoided the need of a priestly miracle to bring the Body extended in space into immediate connection with the elements Bread and Wine, by introducing a scholastic theory of what is meant by presence in Space. A body may be present in Space, said the Schoolmen, in two ways: it may be present in such a way that it excludes from the space it occupies any other body, or it may be present occupying the same space with another body. The Glorified Body of Christ can be present in the latter manner. It was so when our Lord after His Resurrection appeared suddenly among His disciples in a room when the doors were shut; for then at some moment of time it must have occupied the same space as a portion of the walls or of the door. Christ's glorified Body can therefore be naturally in the _elements_ without any special miracle, for it is _ubiquitous_. It is in the table at which I write, said Luther; in the stone which I hurl through the air. It is in the _elements_ in the Holy Supper in a perfectly natural way, and needs no priestly miracle to bring it there. This natural presence of the Body of Christ in the elements in the Supper is changed into a Sacramental Presence by the promise of God, which is attached to the reverent and believing partaking of the Holy Supper.

These were the two theories which ostensibly divided the Protestants in 1529 into two parties, the one of which was led by Zwingli and the other by Luther. They were not so antagonistic that they could not be reconciled. Each theologian held implicitly what the other declared explicitly. Zwingli placed the relation to the Death of Christ in the foreground, but implicitly admitted the relation to the Risen Christ--going back to the view held in the Early Church. Luther put fellowship with the Risen Christ in the foreground, but admitted the reference to the Crucified Christ--accepting the mediæval way of looking at the matter. The one had recourse to a very shallow exegesis to help him, and the other to a scholastic theory of space; and naturally, but unfortunately, when controversy arose, the disputant attacked the weakest part of his opponent's theory--Luther, Zwingli's exegesis; and Zwingli, Luther's scholastic theory of spatial presence.

The attempt to bring about an understanding between Luther and Zwingli, made by Philip of Hesse, the confidant of Zwingli, and in sympathy with the Swiss Reformer's schemes of political combination, has already been mentioned, and its failure related.[39] It need not be discussed again. But for the history of the Reformation in Switzerland it is necessary to say something about the further progress of this Sacramental controversy. Calvin gradually won over the Swiss Protestants to his views; and his theory, which at one time seemed about to unite the divided Protestants, must be alluded to.

Calvin began his study of the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Holy Supper independently of both Luther and Zwingli. His position as the theologian of Switzerland, and his friendship with his colleague William Farel, who was a Zwinglian, made him adapt his theory to Zwinglian language; but he borrowed nothing from the Reformer of Zurich. He was quite willing to accept Zwingli's exegesis so far as the words went; but he gave another and altogether different meaning to Zwingli's phrase, _This signifies My Body_. He was willing to call the "elements" _signs_ of the Body and Blood of the Lord; but while Zwingli called them signs which _represent_ (_signa representativa_) what was _absent_, Calvin insisted on calling them signs which _exhibit_ (_signa exhibitiva_) what was _present_--a distinction which is continually forgotten in describing his relation to the theories of Zwingli, and one which enabled him to convince Luther that he held that there was a Real Presence of Christ's Body in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper. To describe minutely Calvin's doctrine of the Holy Supper would require more space than can be given here, and a brief statement of the central thoughts is alone possible. His aim in common with all the Reformers was to construct a doctrine of the Sacrament of the Supper which would be at once scriptural, free from superstition and from the crass materialist associations which had gathered round the theory of transubstantiation, and which would clearly conserve the great Reformation proclamation of the spiritual priesthood of all believers. He went back to the mediæval idea of transubstantiation, and asked whether it gave a true conception of what was meant by _substance_. He decided that it did not, and believed that the root thought in _substance_ was not dimensions in space, but power. The _substance_ of a body consists in its _power_, active and passive, and the _presence_ of the _substance_ of anything consists in the immediate application of that power.[40] When Luther and Zwingli had spoken of the _substance_ of the Body of Christ, they had always in their mind the thought of something extended in space; and the one affirmed while the other denied that this Body of Christ, something extended in space, could be and was present in the Sacrament of the Supper. Calvin's conception of _substance_ enabled him to say that wherever anything acts there it is. He denied the crude "substantial" presence which Luther insisted on; and in this he sided with Zwingli. But he affirmed a real because active presence, and in this he sided with Luther.

Calvin's view had been accepted definitely by Melanchthon, and somewhat indefinitely by Luther. The imperial cities, led by Strassburg, which was under the influence of Bucer, who had thought out for himself a doctrine not unlike that of Calvin, had been included in the Wittenberg Concord (May 1536); but Luther would have nothing to do with the Swiss. As it was vain to hope that Switzerland would be included in any Lutheran alliance, Calvin set himself to produce dogmatic harmony in Switzerland. In conjunction with Bullinger, Zwingli's son-in-law and successor in Zurich, he drafted the _Consensus of Zurich_ (_Consensus Tigurinus_) in 1549.[41] The document is Calvinist in theology and largely Zwinglian in language. It was accepted with some difficulty in Basel and in Bern, and heartily in Biel, Schaffhausen, Mühlhausen, and St. Gallen. It ended dogmatic disputes in Protestant Switzerland, which was thus united under the one creed.

This does not mean any increase of Protestantism within Switzerland. The Romanist cantons drew more closely together. Cardinal Carlo Borromeo of Milan took a deep interest in the Counter-Reformation in Switzerland. He introduced the Jesuits into Luzern and the Forest cantons, and after his death these cantons formed a league which included Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Zug, Unterwalden, Freiburg, and Solothurn (1586). This League (_the Borromean League_) pledged its members to maintain the Roman Catholic faith. The lines of demarcation between Protestant and Romanist cantons in Switzerland practically survive to the present day.