Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/238

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sanguine hopes and with a predisposition to make every possible concession, in order to pave the way for the religious and political objects which he and the Landgrave cherished. But these objects were viewed with dislike and suspicion by the Lutheran delegates. Public controversy between Luther and Zwingli had already waxed fierce. Zwingli had first crossed Luther's mental horizon as the ally of Carlstadt, a sinister conjunction the effects of which were not allayed by Zwingli's later developments. The Swiss Reformer was a combination of the humanist, the theologian, and the radical; while Luther was , & pure theologian. Zwingli's dogmas were softened alike by his classical sympathies and by his contact with practical government. Thus he would not deny the hope of salvation to moral teachers like Socrates; while Luther thought that the extension of the benefits of the Gospel to the heathen, who had never been taught it, deprived it of all its efficacy. The same broad humanity led Zwingli to limit the damning effects of original sin; he shrank from consigning the vast mass of mankind to eternal perdition, believed that God's grace might possibly work through more channels than the one selected by Luther, and was inclined to circumscribe that diabolic agency which played so large a part in Luther's theological system and personal experience.

Zwingli was in fact the most modern in mind of all the Reformers, while Luther was the most medieval. Luther's conception of truth was theological, and not scientific; to him it was something simple and absolute, not complex and relative. A man either had or had not the Spirit of God; there was nothing between heaven and hell. One or the other of us, he wrote with regard to Zwingli, must be the devil's minister; and the idea that both parties might have perceived some different aspect of truth was beyond his comprehension. This dilemma was his favourite dialectical device; it reduced argument to anathema and excluded from the first all chance of agreement. He applied it to political as well as religious discussions, and his inability to grasp the conception of compromise determined his views on the question of non-resistance. If we resist the Emperor, he said, we must expel him and become Emperor ourselves; then the Emperor will resist, and there will be no end until one party is crushed. Tolerance was not in his nature, and concession in Church or in State was to him evidence of indifference or weakness. Truth and falsehood, right and wrong, were both absolute. The Papacy embodied abuses, therefore the Pope was Antichrist; Caesar's authority was recognised by Christ, therefore all resistance was sin.

Between Luther's political doctrines and those of Zwingli there was as much antipathy as between their theology. Appropriately, the statue of Luther at Worms represents him armed only with a Bible, while that of Zwingli at Zurich bears a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other. Zwingli had first been stirred to public protest by a secular evil, the corruption of his country by foreign gold; and political aims were