James Aitken Wylie - The History of Protestantism (Complete 24 Books in One Volume)

On the 11th of April, 1525, the three pastors of Zurich appeared before the Council of Two Hundred, and demanded that the Senate should enact that at the approaching Easter festival the celebration of the Lord's Supper should take place according to its original institution. The Under-Secretary of State, Am-Gruet, started up to do battle in behalf of the threatened Sacrament. "'This is my body,'" said he, quoting the words of Christ, which he insisted were a plain and manifest assertion that the bread was the real body of Christ. Zwingli replied that Scripture must be interpreted by Scripture, and reminded him of numerous passages where is has the force of signifies, and among others he quoted the following: –

"The seed is the Word," "The field is the world," "I am the Vine," "The Rock was Christ."

The secretary objected that these passages were taken from parables and proved nothing. "No," it was replied, "the phrases occur after the parable has ended, and the figurative language been put aside." Am-Gruet stood alone. The council were already convinced; they ordered that the mass should cease, and that on the following day, Maundy Thursday, the Lord's Supper should be celebrated after the apostolic institution.

The scene in which Zwingli had been so intensely occupied during the day, presented itself to him when asleep. He thought that he was again in the Council Chamber disputing with Am-Gruet. The secretary was urging his objection, and Zwingli was unable to repel it. Suddenly, a figure stood before him and said, "O, slow of heart to understand, why don't you reply to him by quoting Exodus 12:11 – 'Ye shall eat it [the lamb] in haste: it is the Lord's Passover'? Roused from sleep by the appearance of the figure, he leaped out of bed, turned up the passage in the Septuagint, and found there the same word ejsti (is) used with regard to the institution of the Passover which is employed in reference to the institution of the Supper. All are agreed that the lamb was simply the symbol and memorial of the Passover: why should the bread be more in the Supper? The two are but one and the same ordinance under different forms. The following day Zwingli preached from the passage in Exodus, arguing that that exegesis must be at fault which finds two opposite meanings in the same; word, used, as it here is, in the same form of expression, and recording the institution of the same ordinance. If the lamb was simply a symbol in the Passover, the bread can be nothing more in the Supper; but if the bread in the Supper was Christ, the lamb in the Passover was Jehovah. So did Zwingli argue in his sermon, to the conviction of many of his hearers.

In giving an account of the occurrence afterwards, Zwingli playfully remarked that he could not tell whether the figure was white or black. His opponents, however, had no difficulty in determining that the figure was black, and that Zwingli received his doctrine from the devil.

On the Thursday of Easter-week the Sacrament of the Supper was for the first time dispensed in Zurich according to the Protestant form. The altar was replaced by a table covered with a white cloth, on which were set wooden plates with unleavened bread, and wooden goblets filled with wine. The pyxes were disused, for, said they, Christ commanded "the elements" not to be enclosed but distributed. The altars, mostly of marble, were converted into pulpits, from which the Gospel was preached. The service began with a sermon; after sermon, the pastor and deacons took their place behind the table; the words of institution (1 Corinthians 11:20- 29) were read; prayers were offered, a hymn was sung in responses, a short address was delivered; the bread and wine were then carried round, and the communicants partook of them kneeling on their footstools

"This celebration of the Lord's Supper," says Christoffel, "was accompanied with blessed results. An altogether new love to God and the brethren sprang up, and the words of Christ received spirit and life. The different orders of the Roman Church unceasingly quarrelled with each other; the brotherly love of the first centuries of Christianity returned to the Church with the Gospel. Enemies renounced old deep-rooted hatred, and embraced in an ecstacy of love and a sense of common brotherhood, by the partaking in common of the hallowed bread. 'Peace has her habitation in our town,' wrote Zwingli to Ecolampadius; 'no quarrel, no hypocrisy, no envy, no strife. Whence can such union come but from the Lord, and our doctrine, which fills us with the fruits of peace and piety?'"

This ecclesiastical Reformation brought a social one in its wake. Protestantism was a breath of healing – a stream of cleansing in all countries to which it came. By planting a renovating principle in the individual heart, Zwingli had planted a principle of renovation at the heart of the community; but he took care to nourish and conserve that principle by outward arrangements. Mainly through his influence with the Great Council, aided by the moral influence the Gospel exercised over its members, a set of regulations and laws was framed, calculated to repress immorality and promote virtue in the canton. The Sunday and marriage, those twin pillars of Christian morality, Zwingli restored to their original dignity. Rome had made the Sunday simply a Church festival: Zwingli replaced it on its first basis – the Divine enactment; work was forbidden upon it, although allowed, specially in harvest-time, in certain great exigencies of which the whole Christian community were to judge.

Marriage, which Rome had desecrated by her doctrine of "holy celibacy," and by making it a Sacrament, in order, it was pretended, to cleanse it, Zwingli revindicated by placing it upon its original institution as an ordinance of God, and in itself holy and good. All questions touching marriage he made subject to a small special tribunal. The confessional was abolished. "Disclose your malady," said the Reformer, "to the Physician who alone can heal it." Most of the holy-days were abrogated. All, of whatever rank, were to attend church, at least once, on Sunday. Gambling, profane swearing, and all excess in eating and drinking were prohibited under penalties. To support this arrangement the small inns were suppressed, and drink was not allowed to be sold after nine o'clock in the evening. Grosser immoralities and sins were visited with excommunication, which was pronounced by a board of moral control, composed of the marriage-judges, the magistrates of the district, and the pastors – a commingling of civil and ecclesiastical authority not wholly in harmony with the theoretic views of the Reformer, but he deemed that the peculiar relations of the Church to the State made this arrangement necessary and justifiable for the time.

Above all he was anxious to guard the morals of the pastors, as a means of preserving untarnished the grandeur and unimpaired the power of the Word preached, knowing that it is in the Church usually that the leprosy of national declension first breaks out. An act of council, passed in 1528, appointed two synodal assemblies to be held each year – one in spring, the other in autumn. All the pastors were to convene, each with one or two members of his congregation. On the part of the council the synod was attended by the burgomaster, six councillors, and the town clerk. The court mainly occupied itself with inquiries into the lives, the doctrine, and the occupations of the individual pastors, with the state of morals in their several parishes.

Thus a vigorous discipline was exercised over all classes, lay and cleric. This regime would never have been submitted to, had not the Gospel as a great spiritual pioneer gone before. Its beneficent results were speedily apparent. "Under its protecting and sheltering influence," says Christoffel, "there grew up and flourished those manly and hardy virtues which so richly adorned the Church of the Reformation at its commencement." An era of prosperity and renown now opened on Zurich. Order and quiet were established, the youth were instructed, letters were cultivated, arts and industry flourished, and the population, knit together in the bends of a holy faith, dwelt in peace and love. They were exempt from the terrible scourge which so frequently desolated the Popish cantons around them.