| 24. Zwingli's Conflict with Radicalism. | ||||
Comp. Literature in vol. VI., 102, p. 606 sq. | ||||
I. Sources: | ||||
In the Staatsarchiv of Z rich there are preserved about two hundred and fifty documents under the title, Wiedertaeuferacten, *Egli: Actensammlung zur Gesch. der Zuercher Reformation, Z rich, 1879 (see the Alph. Index, p. 920, sub Wiedertaeufer). The official reports are from their opponents. The books of the Anabaptists are scarce. A large collection of them is in the Baptist Theological Seminary at Rochester, N. Y. The principal ones are the tracts of Dr. Huebmaier (see vol. VI. 606); a few letters of Grebel, Hut, Reubli, etc., and other documents mentioned and used by Cornelius (Gesch. des Muensterschen Aufruhrs); the Moravian, Austrian, and other Anabaptist chronicles (see Beck, below); and the Anabaptist hymns reprinted in Wackernagel's Deutsche Kirchenlied, vols. III. and V. (see below). | ||||
Zwingli: Wer Ursach gebe zu Aufruhr, wer die wahren Aufruehrer seien, etc., Dec. 7, 1524. A defence of Christian unity and peace against sedition. (Werke, II. A. 376-425.) Vom Touff, vom Wiedertouff, und vom Kindertouff, May 27, 1525 (in Werke, II. A. 280-303. Republished in modern German by Christoffel, Z rich, 1843. The book treats in three parts of baptism, rebaptism, and infant baptism). Answer to Balthasar Huebmaier, Nov. 5, 1525 (Werke, II. A. 337 sqq.). Elenchus contra Catabaptistas, 1527 (Opera, III. 357 sqq.). His answer to Schwenkfeld's 64 Theses concerning baptism (in Op. III. 563-583; Comp. A. Baur, II. 245-267). Oecolampadius: Ein gesprech etlicher predicanten zu Basel gehalten mit etlichen Bekennern des Wiedertouffs, Basel, 1525. Bullinger (Heinrich): Der Wiedertaeufferen ursprung, fuergang, Sekten, etc. Z rich, 1560. (A Latin translation by J. Simler.) See also his Reformationsgeschichte, vol. I. | ||||
II. Later Discussions: | ||||
Ott (J. H.): Annales Anabaptistici. Basel, 1672. | ||||
Erbkam (H. W.): Geschichte der protestantischen Secten im Zeitalter der Reformation. Hamburg und Gotha, 1848. pp. 519-583. | ||||
Heberle: Die Anfaenge des Anabaptismus in der Schweiz, in the Jahrbuecher fur deutsche Theologie, 1858. | ||||
Cornelius (C. A., a liberal Roman Catholic): Geschichte des Muensterschen Aufruhrs. Leipzig, 1855. Zweites Buch: Die Wiedertaufe. 1860. He treats of the Swiss Anabaptists (p. 15 sqq.), and adds historical documents from many archives (p. 240 sqq.). A very important work. | ||||
Moerikofer: U. Zwingli. Z rich, 1867. I. 279-313; II. 69-76. Very unfavorable to the Anabaptists. | ||||
R. von Lilienkron: Zur Liederdichtung der Wiedertaeufer. Muenchen, 1877. | ||||
*Egli (Emil): Die Z richer Wiedertaeufer zur Reformationszeit. Nach den Quellen des Staatsarchivs. Z rich, 1878 (104 pp.). By the same: Die St. Galler Taeufer. Z rich, 1887. Important for the documents and the external history. | ||||
*Burrage (Henry S., American Baptist): The Anabaptists in Switzerland. Philadelphia, 1882, 231 pp. An account from the Baptist point of view. Comp. his Baptist Hymn Writers, Portland, 1888, pp. l-25. | ||||
Usteri (J. M.): Darstellung der Tauflehre Zwingli's, in the Studien und Kritiken for 1882, pp. 205-284. | ||||
*Beck (JOSEPH): Die Geschichtsbuecher der Wiedertaeufer in Oestreich-Ungarn... von 1526 bis 1785. Wien, 1883. Publ. by the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna. | ||||
Strasser (G.): Der schweizerische Anabaptismus zur Zeit der Reformation, in the Berner Beitraege, 1884. | ||||
Nitsche (Richard, Roman Catholic): Geschichte der Wiedertaeufer in der Schweiz zur Reformationszeit. Einsiedeln, New York, Cincinnati and St. Louis (Benziger), 1885 (107 pp.). He gives a list of literature on pp. vi.-viii. | ||||
Keller (Ludwig): Die Reformation und die aetern Reformparteien. Leipzig, 1885, pp. 364-435. He is favorable to the Anabaptists, and connects them with the Waldensian Brethren and other mediaeval sects by novel, but arbitrary combinations and conjectures. He mistakes coincidences for historical connections. | ||||
Baur (Aug.): Zwingli's Theologie, vol. II. (1888), 1-267. An elaborate discussion and defence of Zwingli's conduct towards the radicals, with full extracts from his writings, but unjust to the Baptists. | ||||
The monographs of Schreiber on Huebmaier (1839 and 1840, unfinished), Keim on Ludwig Haetzer (1856), and Keller on Hans Denck (Ein Apostel der Wiedertaeufer, 1882), touch also on the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland. Kurtz, in the tenth ed. of his Kirchengeschichte (1887), II. 150-164, gives a good general survey of the Anabaptist movement in Germany, Switzerland, and Holland, including the Mennonites. | ||||
Having considered Zwingli's controversy with Romanism, we must now review his conflict with Radicalism, which ran parallel with the former, and exhibits the conservative and churchly side of his reformation. Radicalism was identical with the Anabaptist movement, but the baptismal question was secondary. It involved an entire reconstruction of the Church and of the social order. It meant revolution. The Romanists pointed triumphantly to revolution as the legitimate and inevitable result of the Reformation; but history has proved the difference. Liberty is possible without license, and differs as widely from it as from despotism. | ||||
The Swiss Reformation, like the German, was disturbed and checked by the radical excesses. It was placed between the two fires of Romanism and Ultraprotestantism. It was attacked in the front and rear, from without and within, by the Romanists on the ground of tradition, by the Radicals on the ground of the Bible. In some respects the danger from the latter was greater. Liberty has more to fear from the abuses of its friends than from the opposition of its foes. The Reformation would have failed if it had identified itself with the revolution. Zwingli applied to the Radicals the words of St. John to the antichristian teachers: They went out from us, but they were not of us (1 John 2:19). He considered the controversy with the Papists as mere child's play when compared to that with the Ultraprotestants. | ||||
The Reformers aimed to reform the old Church by the Bible; the Radicals attempted to build a new Church from the Bible. The former maintained the historic continuity; the latter went directly to the apostolic age, and ignored the intervening centuries as an apostasy. The Reformers founded a popular state-church, including all citizens with their families; the Anabaptists organized on the voluntary principle select congregations of baptized believers, separated from the world and from the State. Nothing is more characteristic of radicalism and sectarianism than an utter want of historical sense and respect for the past. In its extreme form it rejects even the Bible as an external authority, and relies on inward inspiration. This was the case with the Zwickau Prophets who threatened to break up Luther's work at Wittenberg. | ||||
The Radicals made use of the right of protest against the Reformation, which the Reformers so effectually exercised against popery. They raised a protest against Protestantism. They charged the Reformers with inconsistency and semipopery; yea, with the worst kind of popery. They denounced the state-church as worldly and corrupt, and its ministers as mercenaries. They were charged in turn with pharisaical pride, with revolutionary and socialistic tendencies. They were cruelly persecuted by imprisonment, exile, torture, fire and sword, and almost totally suppressed in Protestant as well as in Roman Catholic countries. The age was not ripe for unlimited religious liberty and congregational self-government. The Anabaptists perished bravely as martyrs of conscience. | ||||
Zwingli took essentially, but quite independently, the same position towards the Radicals as Luther did in his controversy with Carlstadt, Muenzer, and Huebmaier. Luther, on the contrary, radically misunderstood Zwingli by confounding him with Carlstadt and the Radicals. Zwingli was in his way just as conservative and churchly as the Saxon Reformer. He defended and preserved the state-church, or the people's church, against a small fraction of sectaries and separatists who threatened its dissolution. But his position was more difficult. He was much less influenced by tradition, and further removed from Romanism. He himself aimed from the start at a thorough, practical purification of church life, and so far agreed with the Radicals. Moreover, he doubted for a while the expediency (not the right) of infant baptism, and deemed it better to put off the sacrament to years of discretion. He rejected the Roman doctrine of the necessity of baptism for salvation and the damnation of unbaptized infants dying in infancy. He understood the passage, Mark 16:16, He that believes and is baptized shall be saved, as applying only to adults who have heard the gospel and can believe, but not to children. On maturer reflection he modified his views. He learned from experience that it was impossible to realize an ideal church of believers, and stopped with what was attainable. As to infant baptism, he became convinced of its expediency in Christian families. He defended it with the analogy of circumcision in the Old Testament (Col. 2:11), with the comprehensiveness of the New Covenant, which embraces whole families and nations, and with the command of Christ, Suffer little children to come to Me, from which he inferred that he who refuses children to be baptized prevents them from coming to Christ. He also appealed to 1 Cor. 7:14, which implies the church-membership of the children of Christian parents, and to the examples of family baptisms in Acts 16:33, 18:8, and 1 Cor. 1:16. | ||||
The Radical movement began in Z rich in 1523, and lasted till 1532. The leaders were Conrad Grebel, from one of the first families of Z rich, a layman, educated in the universities of Vienna and Paris, whom Zwingli calls the corypheus of the Anabaptists; Felix Manz, the illegitimate son of a canon of the Great Minster, a good Hebrew scholar; Georg Blaurock, a monk of Coire, called on account of his eloquence the mighty Joerg, or the second Paul; and Ludwig Haetzer of Thurgau, chaplain at Waedenschwyl, who, with Hans Denck, prepared the first Protestant translation of the Hebrew Prophets, and acted as secretary of the second Z rich disputation, and edited its proceedings. With them were associated a number of ex-priests and ex-monks, as William Reubli, minister at Wyticon, Johann Broedli (Paniculus) at Zollicon, and Simon Stumpf at Hoeng. They took an active part in the early stages of the Reformation, prematurely broke the fasts, and stood in the front rank of the image-stormers. They went ahead of public opinion and the orderly method of Zwingli. They opposed the tithe, usury, military service, and the oath. They denied the right of the civil magistracy to interfere in matters of religion. They met as brethren for prayer and Scripture-reading in the house of Mother Manz, and in the neighborhood of Z rich, especially at Zollicon. | ||||
The German Radicals, Carlstadt and Muenzer, were for a short time in Switzerland and on the Rhine, but did not re-baptize and had no influence upon the Swiss Radicals, who opposed rebellion to the civil authority. Carlstadt gradually sobered down; Muenzer stirred up the Peasants' War, seized the sword and perished by the sword. Dr. Huebmaier of Bavaria, the most learned among the Anabaptists, and their chief advocate, took part in the October disputation at Z rich in 1523, but afterwards wrote books against Zwingli (on the baptism of believers, 1525, and a dialogue with Zwingli, 1526), was expelled from Switzerland, and organized flourishing congregations in Moravia. | ||||
The Radical opinions spread with great rapidity, or rose simultaneously, in Berne, Basle, St. Gall, Appenzell, all along the Upper Rhine, in South Germany, and Austria. The Anabaptists were driven from place to place, and travelled as fugitive evangelists. They preached repentance and faith, baptized converts, organized congregations, and exercised rigid discipline. They called themselves simply brethren or Christians. They were earnest and zealous, self-denying and heroic, but restless and impatient. They accepted the New Testament as their only rule of faith and practice, and so far agreed with the Reformers, but utterly broke with the Catholic tradition, and rejected Luther's theory of forensic, solifidian justification, and the real presence. They emphasized the necessity of good works, and deemed it possible to keep the law and to reach perfection. They were orthodox in most articles of the common Christian faith, except Haetzer and Denck, who doubted the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. | ||||
The first and chief aim of the Radicals was not (as is usually stated) the opposition to infant baptism, still less to sprinkling or pouring, but the establishment of a pure church of converts in opposition to the mixed church of the world. The rejection of infant baptism followed as a necessary consequence. They were not satisfied with separation from popery; they wanted a separation from all the ungodly. They appealed to the example of the disciples in Jerusalem, who left the synagogue and the world, gathered in an upper room, sold their goods, and held all things in common. They hoped at first to carry Zwingli with them, but in vain; and then they charged him with treason to the truth, and hated him worse than the pope. | ||||
Zwingli could not follow the Anabaptists without bringing the Reformation into discredit with the lovers of order, and rousing the opposition of the government and the great mass of the people. He opposed them, as Augustine opposed the schismatical Donatists. He urged moderation and patience. The Apostles, he said, separated only from the open enemies of the gospel, and from the works of darkness, but bore with the weak brethren. Separation would not cure the evils of the Church. There are many honest people who, though weak and sick, belong to the sheepfold of Christ, and would be offended at a separation. He appealed to the word of Christ, He that is not against me, is for me, and to the parable of the tares and the wheat. If all the tares were to be rooted up now, there would be nothing left for the angels to do on the day of final separation. | ||||