to us, showing how—not only general integrity, and straightforwardness and zeal against corruptions which derogate from the glory of God—but even the assiduous study of Holy Scripture with prayer[1], will not preserve a man from falling into pernicious error, which may destroy the very good which he labours to promote, so long as there is one uncorrected sin remaining within his own bosom. Zuingli's writings discover an arrogant self-confidence, which thinks lightly of any belief opposed to his own, although it were that of the universal Church; and he became the author of tenets which immediately well nigh effaced the Sacraments of his Lord. His rationalistic tone sowed the seeds of a dreadful harvest, which his country is now reaping.
"This I must ingenuously confess, at the beginning of the book,"—thus[2] he opens his work on Baptism, "that all probably (fiere omnes), as many as, from the times of the very Apostles, have undertaken to write on Baptism, have in no few things missed the mark. It is a great thing that I say, but I am compelled against my will to say it. For never would I have allowed this to pass my lips (although I have always delivered the true doctrine on this subject), unless I had been compelled through that contumacious obstinacy of most contentious men. But that I have herein spoken no less truly than openly, is self-evident. For no one of their number can be found, who has not ascribed to the element of water, what neither it has, nor have the Apostles taught that it had. And those Ancients wrongly understood the saying of Christ to Nicodemus, 'Except a man be born again of Water and the Spirit,' &c. Wherefore we also will see what Baptism is, after a manner far different from what all, ancients or moderns, yea, or the writers of our own times, have done. And all this we will establish, not by dreams of our own, but by testimonies from the Divine Word."
The opinions of Zuingli are of chief importance, because he was the parent of the Reformed, as Luther was of the Church
